SAYING MY NAMES
names held in your mouth like watermelon candies,
like you couldn’t bear to swallow
the cheap, stale taste of someone else’s
unwanted daughter, left to wither in an empty bowl
at the pho place you always thought
you were too good for,
names on letterheads, names on cardstock,
silly names and pet names and legal names with the weight of three languages
xinhui when you’re angry and dudu when you’re sweet,
dookie if i’m lucky and braindead fucking bitch if i’m not,
names engraved underneath periwinkle watch faces
where it’ll press against the skin,
names like kisses on my wrist and water bottles slamming into skulls,
names you type and delete and type again,
announced in public and yelled across a room.
you don’t get to look down at me from the cafeteria balcony and mouth
my name anymore. you don’t get to trace its letters.
i take it back, i’m snatching the syllables from your brain and
scattering them on the floor. forget it. forget it,
doesn’t matter, not worth the time or energy.
if i asked you how to write my name you
would get the brushstrokes wrong.
i could write yours in my sleep,
against my leg, on the ghost of a keyboard,
could type it without looking,
forge it without practice.
you don’t deserve to hold my names in your mouth
when you don’t know how to say them.
i want them back.
you owe me,
you always do,
you’re always taking and i’m
too willing to give for my own good,
too ready to let someone else take my organs
before i’m done with them.
give me my names back.
i’ll carve them out of your skull if i have to,
take my fruit knife and start peeling,
i don’t care if it gets messy;
i’m not scared of your messiness anymore.
i’ll make it ugly, make it raw,
i don’t care what you see when you look at me
wolf or girl or too much or
not enough or just wrong.
today i’m making names like the ginger in my kitchen,
well-loved and familiar,
names like the blackbirds scattering across the telephone wires,
the snails in my brothers’ bedroom,
so secure in their existence,
in their lettuce feedings
once every day,
names like origami roses,
like stacks of unread library books,
silver rings on hardwood desks,
like slices of sunlight between the blinds,
names like pastel highlighters and peonies,
said between gasps of laughter and whispered across a pillow;
names worth waking up to,
names worth writing poems for.
June Lin is a young poet. She loves practical fruits, like clementines and bananas.