Before You Know My Name - Humayra Oishi

Entry is hereby suspended

as if a person can be paused like a flight

like a file

like a mistake

From countries already named before we speak

before we arrive

before we are known

too foreign

too careful

too watched

You say it is for safety

as if I have not

been careful my whole life

as if I have not

learned how to be small

in rooms that were never mine

Entry is hereby suspended

my mother’s voice

mid-sentence

my father’s prayers

mid-air

the language I carry stopped at the border

like it forgot how to cross

You do not say my name

but you say enough

to make me understand

that I am already seen

as something to fear

before I am ever allowed

to be anything else

before you know my name

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Humayra is a Senior majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She claims that she is not good at writing poems and is trying to survive in the creative writing world.