Name
Mahima Kaur

You ask me ‘which coffee?’
and I say out loud
My Es and Os palpable.
you pretend you don’t
hear and you ask me again
and again, till I point to the 
white chalk on the black board,
only to see you smirk
behind your computer screen;

You ask me where am I from?
and I pause to say ‘Here’,
you ask me again, your 
eyes absorbing the brown of my skin
drinking in the difference between our arms,
tired and repelled
I say ‘Nowhere’;

You ask me my name and I
hesitate articulating my A and M,
vowels faltering on my tongue
wobbling where they previously danced
I utter but without 
sound, all gibberish,
I don’t know anymore
how to call myself
the words that I learnt at school?
or the ones that I sipped at home?
or perhaps the only one you understand-

my name drifts 
away floating in friction
swinging in discord

You ask me my name
again, distinctly uttering your
N - A - M - E
I enunciate what I know best--
an incongruous confluence,
‘Jabberwocky?’
your bemused eyes ask,
I sneer back my ‘Yes’, relishing
the schism that resumes
waltzing on my tongue.

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A Literature Major and a linguaphile, Mahima Kaur considers herself as an aesthete whose narratives and works are shaped by her experiences in different roles and places across borders and boundaries. She refuses to conform herself to one discourse and let her Sisyphean process of learning and un-learning flow in her writings. Her works are loud and clear and speak for themselves in a world where her voice is silenced time and again owing to her gender.

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