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.