NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 14: Swallow

Prompt:  Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that delves into the meaning of your first or last name. 

I've spent years grappling with the ambivalence I feel about my given name. In my family, my grandfather was the one who named all the grandchildren, and I was the oldest grandchild so perhaps it was a big occasion for him too - naming his first grandchild. He gave me many things but I often forget that he gave me my name as well, and for that, I'm trying to learn to love it after spending years hating it. In Chinese culture, swallows are symbolic of feminine grace and beauty; it's a common character in girls' names. In the Chinese zodiac, the year of the ox comes before the year of the tiger - and I was born smack in the middle of the transition, just before the new year.

Day 14:  Swallow

no one thought to ask my grandfather
why his first instinct
was to name me for a bird

a swallow

 
impatient child my grandmother said
born on the cusp of the old year
fading grey-golden into the new
the ox, halfway metamorphosized
into the tiger
 
perhaps my grandfather
wished to soften my fierce edges
deflect the stubborn anger that would rage lifelong
at a name dissected for laughs by classmates
mispronounced and ridiculed
it’s pronounced ‘Sook’
no  it isn’t you suck you suck you suck
hahahaha you suck
 
Suk Yin
it means kind graceful swallow my aunt told me
there is no kindness in children’s playground jeers
no grace in the clumsy shame
that sets your name on fire and burns it to ash
the taste of it chalk and bile
on your small bitten tongue
 
on overseas official forms we are told to write
given name middle name family name
but my given name is unacceptable
it can’t be two words dear
either you hyphenate it or run it together
or else separate it into given name and middle name
 
my college degrees
bear a name that is mine yet not-mine
Suk-Yin
a hyphen that is not on my passport
nor my birth certificate
a hypen’s difference that brands me an imposter
i hold degrees i cannot use
because i cannot prove that the person in them is me
that it is not some clone who lived my life
wore my face slipped into my skin
 
i i i i
deconstructed
into short soundbytes
my name reinvented
colonized
easier to pronounce
easier to remember
while the rest of me

erases itself 
 
my name is two words
two characters
two facets in one body
 
i will not hyphenate them
shackle them to the earth
when my grandfather
set space between them
wide as the heavens
so i could be free to fly