"meet your new brother!"
and i look inside the crib --

to see a tiny, wrinkled thing!
an alien. an old man. a baby?!
disgusting, i thought.

"his name is michael."
my mother spoke, carefully saying the name
delicate--michael, michael
so plain, so normal.
unlike i, weird-name-girl.
michael is so generic, so english, so regular-american

still, michael is an ugly alien
an old man in the guise of a baby
my brother.

vii. lonely!

loneliness is made out of three things.

sitting on the bench at recess
no one talking to you because you like to say rude things when they are being dumb.
shunned for having a strange strange name that no one can pronounce
so you have a nickname that sounds ugly to your own ears

viii. a whole new world!

fast-forward, i am eleven years old.

i will start middle school,
brand-new.
brand-new like my red chuck taylor sneakers,
like everything else in my wardrobe,
like my schedule,
like my house, where we relocated to
a neighborhood and guess what?
this is something no one at school will know:
me.

and i start tomorrow...

ix. my name sounds like a bad word.

mr. brown likes to talk fast,
and i don't think anyone is listening
but himself.
he calls my name right after a few tries,
but gives up.
so he just calls me by my last name.
still weird--but shorter and easier to say.
i guess.

2nd period, ms. ly is a bad teacher i can tell.
she is bored, she is apathetic, she can't spell
she can't spell my name.
it looks like a bad word on my name-tag.
i turn it on its blank side to cover it up.

"hi."

comes the voice of a little girl next to me
she has big blue eyes and a tight braid that looks
like it'll fall off of her head.
she looks curious.

"hello."
i reply, and she says what is your name?
so i tell her.
of course, she is confused
she asks me all sorts of questions.

what does my name mean anyway? i don't know.

the ugly boy with shiny black hair next to the girl
snickers and overhears.
"that name sounds like..."
the boy turns my name-tag over
there you can
clearly
see
my. ly's botched job.

they called me the bad word for the rest of the period.

x. lunch is chaos, lunch is hell

macaroni and cheese, pudding cup, and vegetables
the school cafeteria serves.
i don't know anyone here.
me and my lunch tray
get pushed, shoved, bumped
into the stream of kids
yelling, screaming, talking
to lunch.

i end up beneath a tree.
arms bruised, a headache forming,
i eat my lunch.
no one tries to talk to me
and i wonder if this is how lunch
will be every day,
caught in a symphony of chaos, just
another face, nameless
in this giant crowd.

xi. getting-to-know-you

no first day is complete without
stupid gettingtoknowyou games
tell everyone your name,
introduce yourself,
walk around the room,
exchange facts about yourself...

all i can say is
"mynameis______"
i say, "iliketoread and iliketoplaybasketball"
then leave before they can judge me.

xii. home at last!

i close my eyes.
outside i hear the sound of normal-name michael
watching Teletubbies,
i smell dinner cooking, so fragrant
and best of all
i hear my name being said.
this is home
where there is nothing but
familiarity.