Pride Month is on its way! In honor of the Stonewall Uprising in 1970, we celebrate the queer community and take pride in our identities throughout the month of June.

Last night I entered the contest “Color is Pride: True Colors” through vocal.media. The prompt:

“. . .express your pride in the diverse, amazing pieces of yourself. Submit a poem about something that makes you unique, no matter how big or small, and we want your poetry to be inspired by the idea of color—however you choose to interpret it.”

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I am red.
I am red like the sea.
Like the pain in my knees.
Like the way I get when I scream.

I am orange.
I am mimosas and tea.
Effervescence. Serene.
I am laughs from deep in my belly.

I am yellow.
I am sunshine and bliss.
A moment. A kiss.
There’s nothing quite like this.

I am green.
I am nature’s design.
Even the guck and the grime.
Standing tall as a great pine.

I am blue.
I am blue like the ocean.
Calm. But waves often crash in.
An amusement ride of emotion.

I am purple.
I am purple like rain.
Royalty in my own name.
And I will never be the same.

This is Pride.

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Fingers crossed it gets picked! Vocal.media will “be selecting 15 lucky winners for this Challenge; each of the 15 winners will receive a $2,000 prize and will get the opportunity to work directly with Moleskine on their Pride Month campaign throughout the month of June.”

Regardless of the outcome, I am proud and happy to have written a poem for the first time in years. Slowly but surely, I am piecing together my identity—keeping the things I like and shedding the rest that doesn’t serve me. I wrote constantly as a kid. Poems, lyrics, short stories; I never stopped. One of my first dream careers was to be an author of some sort. I lost sight of that over the years, but now look where I am!

I may not be a published author (yet) but I’m on my way back to writing all the time again. I love how the universe answers our dreams in such creative ways.