I write my name
My label, my identifier
My word, my definer
I write my name
And it looks wrong, outgrown
Do I have the power, the control
The grip
To change it

Get a grip
Stop slipping
State the facts
Stop tripping

You’re 17 and you’re young
You’re 17 and you have metal in your head
You’re 17 and you have metal taste
Stuck on your tongue
Dripping off when you talk
Forming the puddles in which you walk
Pooling in words that burn
They are a curse slipping through the smile
That reaches your eyes
Only because you painted it there

With brown eyes you can't make friends
With brown eyes you cried until you couldn’t
With brown eyes you smile like it’s free
You quit dancing
You quit schooling
You quit pretending
You started pretending

I am not the same as the infant born 17 years ago
I am not the same as the name that they gave me
I am not the same as the others that held my name
I am separate from that title
I am something new, beyond
Something true and someone gone

Scar after scar twinkles in the light
Hair after hair is torn out every night
What do you call a work in progress
Incomplete is not my name
I am not quite obsolete
To many I appear petite
To many I should just retreat
What a privilege to be given something to cling to that you never desired to own
No, rain is not the same as snow

A name is not a name
My name is not my name
It is a label I stole from fame
Nicole Kidman is not my role model
But her role was my model
My mother was her model on set
But this is a stage on which we are players
And I will not give a verse a name that is not of my own creation
I will not credit the broken, glue-coated, splinters of myself
To some foreign and separate person
No, not to someone else