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black nail polish


She is  

I mean 

She isn’t 
    I meant. 
 
She is thunder 
    on a warm summer day.
        She is
Lightning atop of
 a clear night sky. 
 
She is, 
How do you say
    Different. 
 
She is not the cheesy
    Type different that 
Cheesy authors write 
    In their cheesy books 
        About
Nothing.
 
She is different 
Like the taste of 
Someone else’s macaroni
Instead of your mother’s 
    That feeling of disappointment 
After stacking your plate 
    Sky high 
Expecting something 
you knew 
was going to taste good
Only to find dissatisfaction. 
 
The gist?
    She is not
        Enough.
Like, 
    She is literally
        Too much. 
 
Dissociating with her peers
    Because she’s too much 
of one thing for one group 
and too much of another 
for the other. 
 
She receives dark eyes
    For dressing her lips in dark pigmentation. 
“Come on guys, it’s just lipstick.”
    “Damn it, stop trying so hard to be different.”
If only she had listened.
        Bordering up her exterior
With darker colors 
Darker things
Darker themes 
All holding darker thoughts, 
    Interior. 
Only because she wore 
dark paint 
on her full lips.     
 
So she sketches
Vivid lines 
    On her thighs,
Late at night,
Winces and ‘ouches’ 
Smothered by her cries. 
But now 
She instead,
stipples red lines
On a sketchbook 
Outlining 
    a new page 
In her life. 
 
The artist who 
No longer craves 
artwork 
etched into skin
But rather hanging 
In art galleries,
Giving some 
Representation 
On their walls
To minorities. 
The writer who 
No longer writes in red ink using 
Blueish lines 
As guidelines. 
But in greens 
With vitality
Because she became 
her own 
positive muse. 
 
Starting over,
    Completely over,
She embraces who is under her dark exterior
    Or maybe it was interior
        She confuses who she was 
From
Who she actually is.
 
She fully embraces 
Her genetic make-up
    Now.
Now?
     Really?
After escaping 
The place where people
Looked like her 
    She’s now proud to be her. 
        Now that no one looks like her. 
And most shame her for being 
    Proud of her. 
 
You see, 
She is too different.
    She’s just
too different!
She embraces it now. 
    Involuntarily un-adapting to her surroundings
Purposely trying
    To be different. 
No one will ever forget 
    Her name.
A majority 
of minorities.
 
But now she’s lighter,
comfortable.  
    Although still having a dark 
remnant
        Like chipped, 
black nail polish. 
 
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