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Free Entry 1, Week 10

Five Years Separated

One cold, damp day
whenever we vote for the President
I walked up the steps of the Fayetteville Crossing,
downtown, still unsure of the possibility
of changing history. I voted
knowing little about any one up for office
aside from the presidential candidates.
Once I reached the tops steps, I saw her
standing beside her mother
much like I stood beside my father,
and remembered the times she stood across
from me at the threshold of her empty house
with parents away at work from 9 to 5,
ready to take me, since it was just a summer fling,
making out behind bushes while her brothers drowned,
drowned me in too wet kisses.
Why am I allowed to see her
like this—wide eyed at the sight of me?
—turning 180 to face a wall of the voting poll building
amid discussion with her mother over nothing, I’m sure,
certainly not discussing me and how I accidentally
slipped insider her as an 18 year old, pulled
out wet and eyed wide, her voice quiet now
in her throat, her bra covering her chest,
her own tongue in her mouth.

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