So I’m talking to a person who knows she’s strange
And I say with inquiry, “If you know you’re strange,
Why not change?”
And she only laughs (quite incongruously)
And smiles (like she’s amused with me)
And answers with that glimmer in her eye
(That tells me she’s bizarre)
And says with pride,
“I know I’m strange
But do you know who you are?
Do you know your identity? I say,
You think you do,
But really you don’t know if you’re “he” or “him” or “who.”
You think yourself quite overly fond
The broadest fish in the greatest pond
The sharpest knife among other blades
Or at least a spark among the shades,
But none of these your soul rests where it’s true.
For I know me, and me is I,
Whether I’m a spoon among knives,
Or a nun among wives,
I know myself to be as me as you are you
Who—me? That’s I, that’s who.”
Now with this spoken softly,
But with many levels of vocalizations
She smiles that odd smile and stares me on straight
I barely can look back at that playful glimmer
Trying up a potful of speech to simmer
And although she’s the shorter and I the trimmer,
I fear that my tongue may be proven too late.
“You judge me too quickly,”
I finally say.
“if you’d rather be weird, then have it your way.
What leaves me puzzled moreover is your queer reply
For you admit that you know off your oddities, aye?
Yet you say this with pride
Like you’d never change.”
Her reply was as quick and as clever, but more strange:
“What’s so weird about me
Is that I’m different than you
And if this is true
Then what’s weird about you
is that you aren’t like me.
Where is the person
That everyone says
Is the ‘normal’ one?
For if you’ll see clearly
You’ll find there isn’t
one ‘normal’ thing under the sun.
Why I speak of my strangeness
With great verbal physique
Is that I find each weirdness
As something unique.
For as you are special, as am I,
For I am me, and I know I’m who.
But little you know yourself, for little is true
For God made us so special as to each be apart
Yet be closely together and knit by the heart.”
And she smiled that smile
So eccentric yet distinctive
And she winked with flavor
and turned on her heel.
And I thought of her speech
For how far it had reached
To the depths of my soul.
And I thought about myself
If I am “he” or “him” or “who”
And whether I knew of my soul what was true
For I found that each weirdness
Is as you are as you.