Nobody Asked Me

Father’s Day Call

An hour-long conversation
Filled with projects and chores –
The ways we’ve been spending time.
The same conversation we always have,
Details refreshed over time.

I thought I’d tell you about my new name.
I never found the right pivot.

Hanging up, I imagine a different conversation….
One where we talk about:

My partner’s new relationship and how much I love their giddy enthusiasm;
My weekly adventures with my ex-husband’s new family;
My pride in my former mother-in-law protesting on No Kings day.

How sad I am to be selling my house;
How happy and grounded I am in my community;
How at home I feel in the life I’ve built here.

I wonder if we’d talk about my new name.
If you’d ask me what changing it means to me.
But no. I know it wouldn’t.

In this imagined alternative,
Full of love and laughter and curiosity,
My new name would have no place.

---

For G

Fluidity born from feather and flame –
Trickster embodied

Riding the turbulent currents:
Chaos and order
Selfishness and benevolence
Matter and spirit

You warp the rules, you cross the lines,
You teach truth through trick and sign,
And leave us changed – laughing, afraid, marked, alive.

Pulling light from shadow, laughter from pain,
Co-creating the new world.

You frustrate us with your clever mischief.
You delight us as we dance in your light.

Who walks the wind between all things?
Who wears the crown of contradiction?

Our Storm-Wing Queen.
Our Storm-Wing Queen!