when you call me that name
enveloping cloud
i suck it right down
to the bottom of my lungs
can't help it.
& it slips through alveolal sacs, leaks into my blood,
makes pulmonary tracks to my heart,
& valves slam shut: BUM-BUM & it's in.
pushed round the rest of my body,
a name like so much oxygen
bound up in heamoglobin shapes
& then given away inside each of my cells
where cycles of tricarboxylates
transform it into energy that powers everything i need:
a name absorbed into all of me.
i've been breathing names but you know each name has a smell,
olfactory traces that attract or repel,
shoot up to your brain & spread right out
like coloured landscapes of what to expect
as if a name gives clues about what comes next
& this name of mine has always itched
like the colour's wrong
the tones don't fit
like proteins stuck in backwards spin
like oxygen glued & bound too tight
like something about this is not quite right.
i've been breathing that name that i always had,
that they gave me so many years ago
& i've been finding myself turning up my nose
like lips curled up almost in disgust,
i can taste it on the roof of my mouth
it sticks in my throat like spit that out.
& maybe people will think i exaggerate:
stop making a fuss, it's just a name
how much difference can it really make?
so-phi-a
i know names are just letters & sounds & syllables
that help you refer to me
but these letters seem to trace in the air
the lines that i should move along.
& these syllables carry too much weight
i've been dragging her around too long.
& these sounds are all layers of
people past & future & idealised:
the kind of woman i've never been,
a kind of woman i'll never be.
so-phi-a
she sits like sheets of paper on skin
lightly, gently pressing me in
name on skin, as if i breathe her through there:
air thick like thunder, pressured and close
air like bristles that scratch as i move
air like i don't know who you're talking to.
well i've been wearing my history on my skin
& i'm all eyes but most of me, you can't see at all
i'm all limbs in space & words falling out
all nerves, & blood & cavities
all hormones & biochemistry
& none of it the sum of it all
& half i can sense
& half i can call things that language permits
& half of it slips out of category fit.
i've been breathing that name in all my life
but i didn't choose it
& it didn't choose me
& to be honest i'd rather have something more slippery
something more boy-girl, more he-she.
so i've folded the lines and syllables new,
new letters that i've been answer to:
sam
& now i've been breathing in air like fresh after rain,
air warm like honey & i sink right in
air light like i move more easily
air like i don't have to try so hard
air that seems to laugh in my blood
that lands in my cells like telling a joke
where all our ideas of woman & man
seem like a badly written comedy show.
sam
air like breathing is a relief
air that i want to absorb into me.
& something in me still feels guilty
that i just dropped her like an old towel to the ground
but i suppose she'll always be somewhere inside
& maybe she'll like this new freedom i found
maybe it's even better for her as well:
inhale, exhale.
