the deadname calls to me in the hallways
like they did that one summer,
on campus for a scholarship that forgot my name anyway
how to call me back home?
renaming is part of the dead,
at times, I carry around the dead
deadname was beautiful and now –
when I am getting ill,
I hear that name taunting me in the hallways,
like the first time I got headsick.
when I told the minister this story,
she recited scriptures recalling my birth-gender,
giving me the correction-prayer
that forced re-naming made me headsick the longest
prayer-weaver told the other holy-people how headsick I was
and they poured sane-water on my sick head.
baptismal pools still haunt me.
I dreamt the water dried up when they dipped my head under
my baptismal robe soaked like the scarlet letter,
no one taught me how to dress for the saint-pool.
my deadname shouted at me like a prayer,
and now I feel it on the heartside.
like a bruised chest when you wear a binder too long,
like a self-portrait of my deadname.
