A poem by Tasha Monroe

(For the ones still here. For what’s still coming.)

They didn’t plan for us to make it this far.

Not after the ships.
Not after the chains.
Not after the fires, the bans, the bills signed behind closed doors to silence us and strip us clean.
Not after Roe fell.
Not after the marches.
Not after the ballot boxes were rigged and rights unstitched in real time.
Not after the headlines screamed and the hashtags faded.

But here we are.

The After.

Not what’s left. What’s next.

We are the descendants of the enslaved.
The daughters of the discarded.
The lovers who refused to stay hidden.
The bodies who said no.
The believers who still get up and build something sacred out of ash.

We are not the aftermath.
We are the architects.

We carry grief in our marrow and still show up full of color, teeth bared, heart open.

They keep underestimating us.

As if loss hasn’t taught us how to fight cleaner.
As if erasure hasn’t made us write louder.
As if rage hasn’t made us craft more precise.

We are not your commemorative month.
Not your back-of-the-catalog story.
Not your approved panel of diversity.

We are what happens when the silenced find their voice.
When the stripped take root.
When the forgotten start to remember themselves.

I am the After.

Of Juneteenth.
Of Stonewall.
Of Roe.
Of every law, loss, and lie that tried to lock us out of the future.

And still, we rise.
We build.
We burn the script and write our own.

Because what comes After isn’t survival.
It’s sovereignty.

This isn’t just resistance.
It’s rebirth.

And if you’re reading this?

You’re standing in it.

The After is here.
And it looks like us.

T.M.

Still here. Still her. Still us.
—The After.