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My mother used to call me “ma noi” when I was a baby.
Then one day I became “mia noi” for a Thai man,
who took care of me well till I had my baby.
Then I became “ma” for my little one.

While making love
many of you murmur and moan in my ear “honey” or “darling”,
but you can call me “Teeruk”, if you wish.
Or you can call me “Fon”, the name my mother once gave me
because it rained the day I was born.
First day in bar when mamasan called me “Wassana”
I remembered I had a long name too,
like many other things which was lost in my past,
now which I remember every time I look at my id card
before keeping it with the hotel reception and going up to your room.
Each one of you calls me by a different name,
one who drifted into my past or still floating in my present.

But when I go back to my room, a shanty by the side of a klong,
my baby with my sister sleeping,
a voiceless dull darkness heavy with the acrid smell of tar awaits me.
Even though the breeze carries traces of sounds
of splash by the anguished waves of klong,
even though cry of a colic baby from the neighboring shack
breaks the silence,
in that solitude a voice of my own calls me by my true name,
a name which doesn’t make me feel
a daughter of my mother, a lover of you or a mother of my baby.
The name doesn’t evoke any memory or feeling,
but it fills the space between an in-breath and an out-breath,
a small fragment of my life with a bliss of being close to myself.

 

© Victor. All rights reserved by the author.

Anyone wishing to contact Victor can do so here at these addresses: victor_kasparov@yahoo.com
VictorKasparov@gmail.com