untitled

Rosie Hong

because that’s all i wanted to be.

a girl left nameless—rendered whole

& baptized in all things holy.

please. this is a eulogy for girls

born untitled. we can be more than the syllables

clenched between yellowing teeth.

in one dream, my mother curls her hollow body

beside me, unfurls my palms

under the lamp light.

i have a mìmì. a secret, she says.

she mouths her name like a confession

of sin, throat parched & hungered for

all the things left untold. i want to find her.

this name. please. she tucks a prayer

in her pocket, crinkles a twenty-dollar bill

under my pillow before she is whisked away by night.

& this is how i remember

my mother: a girl binded

by the identity of her name, body thinning until

she is nothing more than a ghost.

in another dream, sunlight splits the room

& my mother is nameless

but here. a sparrow with her plumage

spreading, salt-slicked from sea. there is no

warmth in this dream, just migration.

wherever i go, strangers still name me

like a coin rusted in dirt or

a fledgling without a mother to call

home. somehow, i see my mother in the movement

of their lips. how her body whittles

to the receding shoreline with every response.

i follow—face my palms to the sky, plaster

a tight-lipped smile. say,

please. leave everything untitled.

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Rosie Hong is a writer from Houston, Texas. A 2024 YoungArts Winner with Distinction in Short Story and 2023 Scholastic Gold Medalist, her work is published or forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Vagabond City Lit, Bowseat, and others. She serves as the editor-in-chief of Fleeting Daze Magazine.