A name gives us identity.
We can stake a claim
like life itself, it’s ours:
to make, to learn and grow,
to make mistakes
I am a Jen.
It represents my name
in a particular time and place:
The 70s.
Those were quite uncertain times
of war and trauma
and the broken promises
of the American dream.
We all have a choice
even our name
In the end, we are not fixed
like a heavy boulder that sits
and waits to be reclaimed into the earth
We are mineral and bone and flesh.
We breathe and remember that this,
this is us
Mutable like the waters
that can make the biggest stone crack.
We all have that power within
