it was like bhumibol adulyadej, the king of thailand
muhammad bin nayef bin abdulaziz al saud, deputy crown prince of saudi arabia
or the full name of pablo picasso: pablo diego jos? francisco de paula juan etc
except the name was given to
me
a skinny little baby in an incubator,
the first child.
born in chicago illinois,
the third child to be born into the new year, 1:52, jan 1
and the only child with that name in the entire hospital
as always.

ii. learning to SPEAK

i could say my own name
by the age of two
my parents would say it to me,
and i would repeat
it was so easy!

i didn't know other people didn't think so
until i went to preschool
and none of the other kids
could say my name!

i didn't correct them
but i knew i was much smarter
because i was the only one,
who could say my name right.

iii. learning to s-p-e-l-l

i could spell my own name
by the age of three
and i was delighted by it
i would spell it out all over the walls
on everything i owned

when i started preschool
i told everyone proudly
how to spell my name
and when i started
kindergarten, the teacher asked me, perplexed

i s-p-e-l-l-e-d it out for her happily but
she got it wrong every single time
so i came to see her as a stupid woman
incompetent of that simple task
because how could a grown lady
not know how to do something i had known
since age three.

iv. first grade

i began first grade
wearing two tightly wrapped hair buns
a poofy pink dress
and a painful smile,
my head still hurting from my hairstyle.

when we arrived,
the first thing we did was make name tags
i saw that there were 2 Michaels, 2 Brians, and 1 Caitlyn and 1 Katelyn
my name was written in big bold letters
the teacher asked me how to say it!

so i did.
"how exotic," she noted.
throughout the rest of first grade they just called me
a nickname that wasn't mine.
no one wanted to give my "exotic" name a try.
and i also saw, the second most exotic name, they said
was carlos!
carlos, a dumb boring name! you could pronounce in
just two syllables.

v. the big kids

one day the big kids
came up and saw that i was lonely,
standing on the far side of the playground
braiding my hair
so they said, "what's your name?"
i replied, and they looked surprised
"what kind of name is that?!"
so i knew, i am weird to them.
so i told them, if they did not like it--
they could put their heads in a place where
the sun didn't shine! (which i learned from my dad)

they looked angry!
i felt triumph and from that day on,
the big kids never talked to me again!

except they told everyone,
that little girl
has a very weird name
no one can pronounce
probably from a weird country like turkmenistan or panama
in a weird language like laotian or swedish
and
she is
very rude.

so it became that i had no
friends.
and it became that i knew:
my name is far too strange.