legends | sunshine

this poem is called, “sunshine”. sunshine is a middle name, not a warmth that can wrap its hands around the chirp of a bluebird in a summertime poem. this is not one of those. my class got new teachers recently. one of them is an art professor, obsessed with science. she keeps attempting to force me to choose whether i’m right-brained or left-brained. i think i’m both because i have an “a” in math, but i’m also the author of this sunshine poem. i’m in her art class and despise her existence. she’s too hung up on trying to inspire us to fall in love with the art of art, like she did. every day before we officially begin, she tells us about how scared she was of taking a drawing class in college. she went to art school… for photography. i can’t even draw a reasonably straight line, much less a self portrait. i am aware of this; however, despite the number of times i’ve told her, she unfortunately will not believe it. she was the preppy kid in high school, while i’m sitting in the back corner of her concrete classroom, trying to listen to the man who sold the world and finish this poem without her noticing. her personality is problematic, but it helped to bloom this sunshine, not summertime poem. today is the first of many miserable ones to come in her class, and she asks my name. i tell her, “char,” c-h-a-r. the quietest girl in the class coughs up, “l-i-e. her name is charlie,” like i didn’t know it myself. i look back at ms. preppy, problematic, personality and say, “but i don’t like it, so call me char”. she looks at me with furrowed brows and delivers back, “hmm, interesting”. what she didn’t know was that this name is not mine. it belongs to the grandfather that died before i had the chance to remember him. “last of the great,” my mother calls me. “you should be proud of your name,” she says. no matter how many times she may repeat it, this foreign title is as much mine as it is a crown. my middle name is marie. it belongs to my grandmother. my last name is my father's. no inscription of myself is my own, except all of the poetry books i’ll never publish. i have three hands. two of them are typing this sentence and the third has it’s fingers gripping my throat everytime i try to read it.