Hello, my name is Momo!
or Morgan
or Morykuntarith
or Mo for short.
It’s always a different name nowadays…
i am ashamed
to be ashamed that i
do not have a name that belongs
in a hall of fame—
a name that induces
a phonetic hesitation,
that triggers
a mild dysphagia
in the mouth of another.
i am embarrassed to say
that any semblance of my name
presents as discomfort:
a foreign body lodged
in the throat,
glottal constriction,
a refusal of passage.
each attempt
a misfire of the tongue.
lingual resistance,
syllables collapsing
under unfamiliar weight unsung.
i watch them perform
oral triage.
truncating, sanitizing,
offering me back something
clinically adjacent
but not quite right.
and yet—
i am not ashamed,
that my name is singular.
thirteen letters. syllables: five.
a full breath capacity
of something unfamiliar.
there is history in me:
etiology rooted in blood,
in migration,
in a lineage that predates
their inability to pronounce me
with love.
but even as i carry pride
like a secondary spine—
why does my body still respond
as if under evaluation?
why does my name feel like
a diagnosis
with no clear baseline—
a condition
of partial translation,
inherited adaptation,
loss disguised as accessibility?
reading my name now,
or however it shall go,
whatever the nurses or teachers
or the wider known world shall hear,
Hello, my name is Momo…
ook like hook,
or oak like tree—
my father’s legacy
softened by my mother’s mouth,
but altered:
romanized.
a careful intervention.
a transliteration meant to reduce
linguistic friction,
to make me more legible
to an american tongue.
and still—
even within my own
khmer inheritance,
my name registers as unfamiliar,
as if i am a mistranslation
of myself.
a deviation from origin.
a phonetic compromising composition.
something almost correct,
but not quite
home.
maybe i am ashamed
that i exist
in this in-between—
not fully mispronounced,
not fully remembered.
not convenient
for the anglo-saxon mouth,
not entirely recognized by my own.
