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.
Somewhere, my name is ordinary.
It moves through streets without consequence.
It is not questioned.
It is not paused over.
It does not trigger a search.
Elsewhere, it becomes a warning sign.
A rumour.
A reason to be watched more closely.
I have learned that belonging is conditional,
renewable only if I perform familiarity well enough.
I have learned that exile can happen
without leaving the room.
Yet still, I write the name in full.
Still, I let it take up space on the page.
Still, I refuse to rename myself
for the comfort of those who fear adjacency.
If the road is unbridgeable,
then let the name be the crossing.
Let it be the evidence that I existed on both sides,
that I did not choose erasure
when the world asked for convenience.
