Mẹ,

I am hurt by the way things have ended. How do you struggle with your second language, but know exactly what words jab at my dignity? The lack of “I love you”s as I grow up is justified, yet at the times you desire, you’re suddenly fluent in the language of breaking my heart. You articulate clearly and concisely, every syllable stabbing into my spirit as I swallow the lump in my throat. I still bite my tongue with remorse for growing into what you want to be. I choke down any remarks that would make you think less of me (less of you).

You compare me to the man who broke us, but I refuse to see him in the mirror. I have your left dimple, and my brother’s skin that contrasts yours so vividly like the branches that hold your dear orchids next to the porcelain in the glass closet that’s as fragile as your ego. My eyes come from what I have overcome, and the fire in my heart is God. I wish you saw His glory within me, and not the beast that you married.

I wish you weren’t so embarrassed of yourself. I wish you felt familiarity in a country as foreign as mine. For despite all you have done, I want to show you off. I am sorry for how you raised me. Most of all, I forgive you for all the apologies I never received. May you perceive yourself with grace.

Love,
your daughter

Many have asked,
What’s in a name?

In the fifth month, five letters became four.
Nothing was wrong with “my” name.
Nothing at all.
Yet it clung to me like a wet cloth.
Poison pours from my father’s lips as he curses it.
Venom echoes down hallways, searing my soul with each syllable.
All because I remind him of her.
Hatred in his eyes,
Fury in his gaze,
He roars the name she gave me with such rage that I learn to hate it.
I promise myself to burn those five letters to a pile of nothing,
Sweep it under a table,
Discard it as he discards me.

I broke my promise.
Tears well up as I ask my lover,
Would one less letter break the world?
His answer pierced me like a soaring star–
Yes, yes, it would.
He won’t call me anyone else.
He loves “i” too much.
So much praise to the extra syllable,
that I grow jealous of the name he worships,
for it is not my name.
I bite my tongue and allow the label to consume me.
The sun falls; he melts into my ear.
Laced with sin, his tongue sings a mantra I would otherwise adore.
There is nothing to admire about love lined with lust.
I find no pleasure in the name he whispers to me
It is not my name.