Aishling

My name, misspelled in both its original Gaelic
as well as here in America, means dream.

It represents a confrontation the second I introduce myself.
It means correcting a person upon meeting him or her.
It means spelling it slowly and repeatedly to the person writing it down.
It means being told,
as if I hadn’t heard,
the name’s origin.

It represents a dream my mother had for me,
her most passive child.
That perhaps, if I started every introduction fighting,
I would not end up getting hurt.

She failed to notice, however,
as if it were put there to contradict her original intent,
the silent I
which announces my own silence
when you want to tell me
again
that my name was a form of poetry.