Farting Unicorn

Farting Unicorn

I can’t remember when i didn’t want to be different

When I wasn’t painfully aware that I was different

More than skin tone

More than experience

I have been different forever

In a dance recital, my name was bigger on my dancing stairs

It wasn’t planned,

That’s just how it happened

How we interrupted the instructions

Happened again

I somehow got it wrong

I dyed my ballet shoes white, when they were supposed to be black

Thus again I was visibly different

Why couldn’t I be like others

Why did I like liverwurst

When others gagged

Why did I always have a different drummer

A different beat

That was always so infectious

I had to dance to it

It wasn’t that I wanted normal

I knew that was off the table

I just didn’t want the spotlight

The one that felt like it found me

Every time I went against the stream

Why did lime green and hot pink

Become my happy colors

Plus leopard

It likes I can’t help myself

As I face even newer truths

All I can see right now

Is how I become even more different

And it scares me

Brings back the old feelings

Of knowing

I am like this

But the person next to me is not

I have spent an awful lot of time

Trying to be less different

Trying to stop feeling like I was the only one

My own special brand of unicorn

Not the beautiful one

The awkward one

You know the one who snorts

And farts

And has more lime green and hot pink

Than the rest of the rainbow colors

That unicorn

The funny thing

Is as I write about that unicorn

I can’t help but like it

I like that unicorn

That is my type of unicorn

So maybe just maybe

I’ve listened way too much

To others who hate different

Who fear being different?

Maybe as hard as I try

Even if accidentally

I was made to be different

My letters spelling my name

Are meant to be large

And as I think about it

Dying my ballet shoes white

Felt like I was making a major change

Just so I could be like everyone else

So maybe

The real problem

Has been me

My wanting so desperately to be anyone but me

To want to erase my differences

Maybe I am a farting unicorn

With a mostly lime and hot pink mane

With leopard hooves

Or maybe it’s a leopard horn

And a black tall

And rainbow wings

Because maybe I am that different

And my unicorn

Or me

Maybe I fly

Snorting, farting, shining, shimmering

And finally embracing all my differences

Because that is what makes me

Me