Unbridgeable roads of change. Navigable only via the compass of a name that ties you to both ends of your cultural spectrum. I clutch these pages and caress them as I ponder the capacity at which one has to choose a name that can access worlds and what may happen without a name that your own homeland believes to be adjacent to a foreign entity and an enemy.
History taught me that names are not neutral.
They carry residue.
They inherit blame.
They arrive already charged with questions
you did not ask to answer.
I was told a name could protect me
if I made it smaller,
if I let it blend,
if I filed down the parts that sounded like resistance.
As though survival were a matter of phonetics.
But erasure is not safety,
it is a quieter danger.
It teaches the body to disappear politely,
to thank the room for tolerating it.
There is a grief in watching your name
become negotiable.
There is a fury in realising
how often you agreed to it.
I carry my full name like contraband now,
hidden but intact,
waiting for a place where it can be spoken
without explanation,
without fear,
without translation.
