name (noun):

1 a: a word or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of a person or thing

Say my name, say my name suggests movement. Say my name, say my name a summon. Say. If you call me everything to get my affections, my response to you is just echous phantom acknowledgment to someone I don’t resonate with. From mouth to speak, mouth, speak — hope that it reaches me. My name. Hope that it reaches me.

Surmise this an etymology. My mother had twins and I was conceived before my technical “younger” brother in the most fraternal sense. But my mother thought of the boy she wanted first and miscarried years before and named him for a man she wanted to be our father and wasn’t. His name is full and subsequent too, Bruce Carlane Bivens. Easy. Me? It’s bree-YAWH-nuh, b-r-e-APOSTROPHE-capital AYEE-n-n-a, don’t let them white teachers say yo name any type of way. I went to primary school casting my name spell, spelling out, correcting substitutes, correcting snickering classmates, new friends, who wanted so badly to drawl Texan my perfect YAWH to ANNE, mistake my lone e for i, forget my A is exalted, that my apostrophe is high cast right before. Scrawling neatly punctuation teachers didn’t think a kindergartener could pronounce, let alone utilize properly in context. My name means noble, virtuous, strong, high, exalted.

name (noun)

5: appearance as opposed to reality

In high school me and my twin brother learned that our names were only partially right. Some government entity mailed my mama and told her that our last names were incorrect and needed to be our biological father’s. We tried out the politically correct Robinson. Bruce Carlane Robinson, Bre’Anna Sade’ Robinson, and thought we sounded too much like wind too much like going too much like where? And decided we’d rather be called for a man we never met than for a man that was ours but never there.

Graduating high school my principals told me, after confirming the spelling of my name for my diploma, that it was wrong. I said something like excuse me? my name is bree-YAWH-nuh, b-r-e-APOSTROPHE-capital AYEE-n-n-a. I asked if it was a discrepancy of special characters because I’ve been saying apostrophe since I was in the kindergarten and I know that sometimes computer programs make a fuss about adding special characters in names that are more than letters but this is my name. The copy of my birth certificate they possessed said, well contrary dear. Your name here is Breanna Sade Bivens. And this is the name that’ll be on your diploma unless you get a new birth certificate.

For the record, the Texas Department of State Health Services Vital Statistics Unit says that I am a true and correct reproduction of the original recorded in that office. After waiting months for this affirmation in 2016, under the authority of Section 191.051, Health and Safety Code, I’ve been amended and corrected. When I crossed the stage in a crowd of hundreds, my principal announced the name that meant noble, virtuous, strong, high, exalted. But I felt like myth. too Much like wind. Too much like going.

name (verb)

1: to give a name: to call

I wondered what an essay like this was doing in a chapbook about space and allowance. In our introductory special workshop during one of my MFA school’s residencies, Gabrielle Civil told my cohort of six to find a place on our yoga mats in the dance studio where we would fodder for the next five days and call to ourselves in the space like we were trying to get our own attention. We could be right in front of ourselves, floating in a ceiling corner, in the reflection of the studio’s mirrors. We just needed to captivate ourselves. I asked, like a mantra? Yes, it was a sort of summoning, and she would bring us back to the practice because Ms. Civil said we could go strange places during this exercise. I sat on my pink yoga mat barefoot in front of the mirror, breathed deep and cross-legged, and when she said so, we all started calling our names:

Bre’Anna Bre’Anna Bre’Anna Bre’Anna Bre’Anna BREEEE! brEEeEeEeE TOOT SCOOT tooterwooter Tootie! Annie Bre’ Bre’Anna! Bre’Bre’ bee BB HoneyBun Bambi BreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeYAAAAAAAAWHNUH BRE’ANNA SADE’ BIVENS Bre’Anna? Sade’? Sadé! I know you hear me girl! Can you hear me? Bre’Anna?

I called my name short of the apostrophe people wanted so badly to be a hyphen, called my name full, called myself names nobody calls me anymore, the names my entire family calls me. I called myself the name I think I wish I was called and only felt myself floating from the discursive rambling of the name I’ve been so called and could not become a thing reached.

Ms. Civil told us to wrap up our calling, to come back to the circle and introduce ourselves and possibly share where we went during that exercise. If we were able to get our own attention. On my turn I told everyone my name was, Bree-yawh-nuh, but that they could call me Bre’ like they could hear the apostrophe. I told my peers that I haven’t liked my name in a while, and every time I called myself everyone I’ve ever been I felt all those whiles and saw myself hovering above the corner of the studio I was sitting in with a mocking grin. Ms. Civil asked me if there was something else I’d like to be called and I told her I would have to think about it. Because I’ve been Breanna Sade Bivens and Bre’Anna Sade’ Bivens and even though I’ve given everyone the shorthand on account of me being so tired of fighting for a name I thought was mine, and then wasn’t and then was? I just don’t feel like any one of them.

A name suggests movement toward a person and indicates proximity, like when you say my name I can turn towards you and not grimace, feel high like an apostrophe and exalted capital letters. But when you call me, when you say my name, it don’t reach me; it’s stray cat looking to be chosen but I don’t reach.

I even tried to employ the measures I should take in my sentence forging by being grammatically correct the way all my teachers taught me. But writing this essay with indentions, capital first letters felt too much like mockery of the authority and definition I lack in my own structure.

name (noun)

1: a vision of ownership, authority

They used to call her Bre’Anna. Long for Bre’, she could never make sense of her name sounding butter sweet graceful. In the mouths of the barely knowing she almost sounded palatable. Their inflections almost made her hopeful she could live up her apostrophed-nobility. But with her own enunciation, what she’s called died on her tongue. Phonetic chunky gruel couldn’t convince her that people needed her name to claim her. Phantom calling that old spell simply summoned someone indifferent. Who you think you talking to? This is an elegy.

Call her first instead for The Sweetest Taboo, Nigerian-British singer of her lyrical musings. Like she strategically sows syntax solivagantly so some sorrow soul, or somebody someday see’s finally that she’s sun sophisticated solar systems. Call her second for the writer whose weapon she’s learning is her word. The small-winged one colored of the earth who’s mocked for how close she is to the ground but simultaneously rivaled for the only difference between her and heaven being a touch. She’s still contemplating the too indoctrinated complicit masculinity of her last name and what it means to inexorably be her father but you can almost hear her summoning now: say my name Shaw-Day Ah-Fruh; S-a-d-acuteE A-f-r-a.