You will often wonder if there is a chance
of you actually being jettisoned from your native
planet into this one.

Because, really, what other reasons
could there be for you to feel
so different?

Your loudness and insistence on being heard
will no longer be the cute thing that makes you special
but the reason you are never picked in gym.

It won’t help that soon after
you will become what their definition
of a woman is.

So, in an illogical attempt
to fight back you will choose
to spend the next 12 years hating

on the color pink, as if who you are
can be summed in the hues of it.
You will start listening to Korn

but will stop in 2002, and contrary
to what you might think,
that is something to be thankful for.

You will spend the following years
saying sorry so much
that it sounds like hello.

You will treat your body
as if it doesn’t deserve
the space it occupies,

molding it into a figure that will turn
inside a box whose music you won’t get
to choose.

It will take you twenty three years
and seven months to not care
who sees you dancing.

I promise you, it is worth the wait.

 

 

Noura, 24
UAE (United Arab Emirates)