Later that night,
on my sleeping mat,
I stare at the darkened shapes
in the old wooden room,
and it hits me, the why of it.
A clear thought like starlight,
the kind that only comes
after something tough happens.
I click on the flashlight,
dig around for a marker,
pull an old picture off the wall,
and start to sketch.
I draw a bad picture of Bigfoot:
brown fur, giant feet,
long arms and longer teeth.
Pick, wake up and look at this picture.
He makes a noise, and I go again.
Bigfoot or yeti, Pick? Look.
And it’s like this for a while,
me holding up my Bigfoot picture,
asking him to decide if it’s
Bigfoot or a yeti.
Pick whispers, in a sleepy
yawn, That’s Bigfoot?
I laugh. What if I tell you
it’s a yeti?
What? Pick says.
It’s a yeti, I say.
It’s Bigfoot, he says.
Look at the brown fur.
Everyone knows yetis have white fur.
It’s a yeti, I say. A yeti. Yeti.
Yeti. Maybe it’s a southern yeti.
Maybe it’s the summer. Yeti all the way.
How can you know? You don’t.
Fine! he yells, defeated. Yeti.
NO! I shout.
It’s Bigfoot!
He looks confused,
sleepy in the dull light.
Do you get it? I say.
Everyone thinks the yeti
and Bigfoot are the same,
but they are completely
different creatures!
If you call something a name enough times,
maybe you just accept it.
Everyone knows that the yeti
is found in Arctic climates, the Himalayas.
He’s the Abominable Snowman.
Bigfoot is a Sasquatch, native to North America!
Everyone knows that they are different creatures,
but they just make them the same
because they don’t even TRY
to look at who they REALLY are.
Fine, he grumbles, fine. Can I sleep now?
and drops down to his pillow.
I let people call me names
because that’s what
they’ve always done.
I let them make me into who I am.
Some of the biggest lies I ever told
were the ones I told myself.
I’m too fat
I’m not good enough
They will never like me
I don’t have to accept that everyone
else says that Bigfoot is a yeti,
when I know the truth.
Each animal is its own self.
There’s a possibility of a different
truth. Maybe I can be someone different
when I wake up.
Not Bigfoot or a yeti.
Maybe it isn’t even that I want to only lose weight.
Maybe I want to find the real me.