Sweetie

I try on last names

as often as I look at routes,

places to run off,

maybe to settle—

not for love nor loneliness,

but to escape connotation.

I’d make one up, a name

that doesn’t shame me.

Maybe I’ll take a name

from generations back,

on my mother’s side—

anything to oppose

what I’d have never

chosen for myself.

Then I remember the advice

of my grandmother, the woman

my first name honors:

Sweetie, you can rebuild that name,

make it mightier

than what your father did to it.