Nameless
Under the executive order, we no longer issue U.S. passports... with an X marker.
—U.S. Department of State
When considering a name change after the unexpected sunset of a marriage, new word arrives of the end of X on passports. A choice: my name or my gender. A choice I don't want to make.
I am stuck between an outward label for myself that doesn't match who I wish to be and sheltering an inward knowing of myself, tucking my gender into blankets, knowing the outside world believes it can remove from me an essential piece of myself.
I never expected to despise my own name, but I do, a borrowed identity for more than a decade. Like powdered glass on my tongue whenever I speak it. The unsettling sound of intentional nails scratching the height of a chalkboard when people say my name. Ms. Mitchell, a double desiccant.
In a dream, I have lost the ability to speak. My name is garbled letters in my mouth, sand, foam packing peanuts.
My fingerprints are sandpaper to the touch, no longer distinguishable, a sandpiper's footprints fading as the tide trickles in.
I am able to tell myself who I am, what I wish to be called. But I cannot speak out.
I am like Nameless, in Time of Eve, whose name has been scratched out, overwritten, by someone seeking to discard a robot, rescinding responsibility, chucking a family member off to the sea of forgotten objects, who screams an unrecognizable song, an unpronounceable echo, who does not know their name is no longer recognizable.
I am like the robot and not like the robot. I know my name. But I cannot become it. Or I am not ready for the cost.
A person in a midnight blue robe and curved, hooked hood hands me blue-beige paper hand-pressed from wood pulp, material on which I am urged to write. The figure hands me an elaborate, carved pen made of mahogany. Tell us your name, he urges telepathically. I write Elizabeth. I write Eli. Tell us your full name.
In front of a quiet pond nestled in the mountain forest, my tears reach the water. Beneath me a swirl of green fish gobble the tears that have touched the pond and turned into tiny pearl orbs.
~