Elucidating Questions

I got my first piece of mail with my full name on it

My real name

Me, mine

With the whole lot of Ls

Welsh is great

Goodbye ties to my father hello ties to some person way back who was forced to anglicize their last name

To the person who thought it would be gone forever

It’s mine now

Maybe you felt like it was the right thing to do

But, I don’t know

My fighting spirit comes from somewhere

And the name means something

Leader, lion like, who knows

Interestingly I didn’t know it was connected to anything in particular until just now

I just wanted to remove the English from me

As much as I could

I’m a wild thing

No Anglo-Saxon could conquer me

I wonder if there were members of my family fearing the wildness would be stamped out

I wandered the forests as a child

Spoke with trees

Animals

Now I speak to bugs too

Something in me has always been wild

Someone who fights for what’s right

As best they can

Knowing right and wrong are not absolute

That the world is showered in greys

But the colour

People so often forget the colour in the world

My name

The thrill I got from seeing it in print

It’s real

Not just a thought trapped in my head

Sprinkled here and there on the web like a whisper

I’ve been existing in this space where I occupy the existence of another person

Someone who never existed

Someone who was an imagined creation of society’s expectations and fear

When I hear her name I flinch

Because she’s gone

She doesn’t occupy this space anymore

She did her fighting

Did her attempt at being everything society expected

She kept me safe until I was strong enough to voice who I am

Who I actually am

She did her best

Now it’s time for the name to rest

Goodnight trees of ashes

It was not for me

She was the cocoon

I am the moth that emerged

I haven’t really existed though

I kept the shell

After all becoming something

The government doesn’t like that

Things take money and time and transportation I didn’t have

This year has been so difficult to describe

I want my sister to be here to see me make my name real

What a huge milestone to go through without you Mel

It’s like up and down and way down and then up again

It hasn’t been neutral

It’s been brutal

But good things are happening too

And I can’t even handle that by the time the year, that is almost over, ends my name will be real

Have I ever asked you to stay away?

I’m asking you again then

I want to make it until then

I want to

Even though it’s going to be lonely as hell

Alone I am making steps to realise myself

Terrifying as it is

I guess I didn’t need you after all