The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Paola was my mother’s middle finger to my father’s mother who demanded I be named after her. Edith was too risky of a prophecy, my mother is not a gambler. 

Italian for small, which I tried to be my whole life and failed, according to the worst parts of myself. Perhaps she named me this as a prayer. 

Paola is every other girl’s name on my side of the world but far too exotic for this side. The sound of it a threat or expectation. 

Paola is what ails you, the lump in your throat, that dryness on your tongue, the marbles in your mouth, that thick silence before roll call, the heavy body undone and redone in your image, the fragile thing you must save and civilize. 

It’s that I’m-just-never-gonna-be-able-to-say-that, that bear-with-me, that weight, that wide-eyed massacre.