Waiting to Bloom

Waiting to Bloom

I have two names

One planted for me in Korea

and the other grown into overseas

Every day I tend to their sprouts

worried they might be rotting at the roots

I don’t like telling people my Korean name

Because as soon as I mutter it,

the words meant to be said with pride and a sense of self,

become an instant amusement

“What was that?”

“Say it again!”

“Can I call you this?”

“Did I pronounce it right?”

I nod like the China doll I’m meant to be 

but they have soiled it beyond repair

It is now a muddy jumble of noise

Mispronunciation after mispronunciation

until the beautiful pair of syllables my dad chose

to symbolize the person he wanted me to become

becomes nothing more than a ching chang chong novelty

It is the name on my student ID, passport, license

the dotted line of every paper I sign

Though officially my identity

I am trained to excuse it, deny it

I scrawl Jennifer into the box labelled “preferred name"

Shove Jennifer in brackets on exams

Ask for new nametags

I go by Jennifer, it’s easier that way

although it’s actually really hard

Jennifer

It is of Welsh origin, meaning fair and smooth

although I am neither

Chosen at random, for anglophone tongues

It was never mine

연수

It is one word in Korean, chopped in two in English

연수: spoken, I shift from a slippery flow to a sharp sting

I sound like a word for “lesson”

and I have so much to teach you

연수 

연 as in lotus, 수 as in exceptional

I am supposed to bloom.

연수 is not beautiful because you deem it exotic

it’s beautiful because it is exact

And when you say it

I want you to strain over the seemingly peculiar arrangement of vowels

I want you to question the pronunciation

I want you to feel the weight of my name as heavily as I do some days

I want your tongue to tumble the way my parents’ might with your name

I want you to struggle, to suffer, to hesitate

Be perplexed.

I don’t want to be easy because Jennifer is easy

and Jennifer is smooth

and I cannot ever be either

It’s not easy to exist, 

to be

when you’re dark and jagged

and your identity is halved

and you live your days forgetting that you were meant to be exceptional

a flower that can bud in the dirtiest of waters

Sometimes I just want to

shout my name all over and over again

carve it on trees

spray it on walls

shove it down throats

tattoo it all over my body

So I can somehow truly feel it

Because I don’t know if it’s mine anymore,

If I will ever truly bloom