Periphery

—after “Harlem” by Langston Hughes

I move through this city. I am thinking about my mother, who told me this morning that I was named from many other names by my uncle, who wrote on a sheet, oubah, and placed it in a hat with the other names, and said, she is, and she will become.

I think my mother is not unlike many other women who know that their daughters are their own being extended over limbs and ligaments. Proof of the essential qualities of longing, a life lived through each contracted feeling. Each river needs a stream that calls from that river.

My mother does not remember the name she placed within the hat that day. She tells me that my name is not hers, but my skin is. That my limbs that tower over her are somehow hers.

My lashes that sometimes feel like a whip are hers, even in their weary, drooping ways.

She tells me that I began between her thumb and her forefinger. That I was conceived on the periphery of some unfurling dream.

I walk along these city streets and think about my mother, who watches me from small Starbucks corners, and passing strollers. What is she thinking?

Why doesn’t she call to me, shout the name she placed among the many?

And suddenly, I feel faceless and alone among the streams that flow painfully and across me here.

I am, and I am becoming. Somewhere beyond my conception, an extension of my mother stretched all throughout this city. Hardly remarkable, she watches herself wander around a corner and down a pathway, an imprint of a torn off piece of paper placed in a hat.