one day, i will have to beg my own mother, who carried me nine months and raised me dozens more, to say my name and not the one on my birth certificate, the chosen name i boast with pride but she hides and pretends she doesn't hear my sisters use- i will have to beg my own mother to say her only son's name and not because she doesn't know it but because she will not use it and one day i will have the money to move away from this city she resides in and she will choose the fork of the road that i follow if, no, when, she refuses to say my name.
one day, i will leave the roads i know in the neighborhood i was raised in, a part of a city i was born in that never knew me, no more than my own mother did. i will finally grow my garden in the yard of a home i have made with those i love, who love me and use my name with the same pride i use it with, and i will finally be able to breath. perhaps ill build the home with the man i recently reconnected with after nearly five years, or perhaps it will be with the couple wanting me to made that duo a triad or perhaps i have not yet who that home will be made with, but i know that home will stand on a foundation of chosen names shouted out with pride.
