I'm disowning my name.
In America, my name is cumbersome
and clumsy
and confusing
so I'm leaving it behind.
See,
my name starts with an S and ends with a Z
and one's a mirror of the other
so they're like bookends
for a collection of letters
that spell a name
that I never really felt belonged to me.
Every morning, when I wake up,
I wriggle into my name
but it doesn't feel quite right.
It's like borrowing your best friend's jeans
even though she's tall and skinny
and you've got a hundred generations of Puertoriqueña swirling around the blood in your hips.
I don't like my name
cause it doesn't diffuse across your lips.
It bursts through your teeth.
It's got a weight on your tongue
that brings down the sound with the weight of
a thousand sinking ships.
I've got a
Hispanic Titanic of a name
but my skin's so white
it seems impolite to claim an ethnicity
that only lends its elasticity
because of my father
and the people that brought him here.
My name is not me.
It never was.
It is an anchor that keeps me on the island of what my family used to be.
I am not a race.
I am not a category next to a box on a sheet of paper.
I am the syncopated heartbeat of a tribal drum.
I am the ****** whisper of water on the sand.
I am the sunburn on the corrugated tin.
I am the hunger in the stomachs of the working poor.
So when I die
let me not be remembered by
fifteen letters I did not choose
seven syllables I did not select
three titles I did not ask for.
Let them tell stories of
what I did
where I went
what I saw
who I loved
the words I spoke
the thoughts I formulated,
ignorant of my race
free of bias and prejudice
and preconceived notions
of what I should have been
because in the end
none of this will matter
I'll have no strength for words
but with a penultimate breath
I'll still be able to smile.