My name means strength even though it’s not supposed to.

its five fragile letters remind me of
things that shouldn’t be able to stand up on their own but do
anyway.
It has a hidden ‘h’ on its tip that lives
on the corners of my lips always
but that does not exist when you say it aloud.
it sticks to the roof of each and every person’s mouth who
exhales my two syllables
although I am the only one that knows
I leave pieces of myself as
surreptitious souvenirs.

when I was younger I did not understand it because
how can something be so immensely invisible but still belong?
I never did quite forgive ‘h’ for that
and so it was a lack-luster dead-weight secretly tucked away
silently mourned and regretted
to this day

that little letter knows lovelessness to a degree that would crush my ribs.
‘h’ reminds me of sighs and rings of coffee stains and loneliness.


I am a princess
In languages that don’t know how my tongue tastes
yet I still welcome the synonym as if
it were rightfully mine as if I deserve it too much
when it is inscribed in endearment
and dipped in the speech that watched me grow up
the same one that dulls my first ‘a’ into a silently throbbing ‘e’
smoothing out the sharpened edges of the consonants
(but not my spear-head heart)
the same one that taught me how to cry
(through manic pencil scratches and violins)
The same one Edgar Allan Poe used in his poems and stories*
(*love notes to me.)


My name means love because I told it to.

And the way I've tried to love myself for so long inherently shows
The only reason my heart hurts so often is because it is too large to fit inside
my toothpick rib-cage and careless skin.
let me share it the way I share my first letter
with my favourite flowers when I was fourteen and with silence
and all of my unborn siblings.
It is not their fault my mother’s love affair with the slippery sound of ‘s’
outlasted the maturity of my father’s affection
it is not their fault and it is not her fault and it is not mine and they deserve my heart more than
he ever will.


I am misplaced,
born in the womb of a book I will never get along with
because I feel the way It gives its lies away in the corners
of every wooden cabinet
inside of every dusty nightstand
sitting with dismay next to beds used and reused
by strangers and lovers and Buddhists and liars

is a shameful way of begging to be touched
with too much disregard and too little factuality.

But my name means forgiveness because I want it to.

A pardon for the permanent inability
of being a nickname and the sullen reality
that I make mistakes over and over again and refuse to remember
how it feels when the ground once again kisses my knees


but this is okay.
this is all beautiful.