My mother calls me one evening
to tell me I can no longer
call her by our name—

Or to ask me, rather.
To grant her permission
to sever the nominal bond
between us, ever present
since birth.

I tell her, “It’s fine by me,
it’s not my name,” even though
it is, of course.

I stew in it while repeating
the phrase robotically
as she asks again and again.

In truth, I would always want to be
tethered to her in this tongue-way,
our blood relation seemingly
cemented by letters arranged
in the same fashion.

But I also know it tethered her
to my faulty father,
whom we have both
salvaged ourselves from.

I consider my mother’s history
with last names—

abusive dad,
abusive stepdad,
abusive husband,

each with a certain length
of identity imbibed in it.

I know I will never change mine,
singular and soiled as it may be
by the men who have also had it—

It is the only way
I have ever asserted myself
in this lifetime.

So who am I to tell her
how to choose?

Briana Naseer is a Pakistani-American school psychologist and poet living in Chicago, Illinois. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, and a master’s degree in education and an education specialist degree from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Her debut poetry collection is entitled Rind.