By Mina C.

Mina, Marina, Mei Li. My names are beautiful, gem, wisdom. They are fish, the ocean, the place where people dock their boats. My name is fine and small - delicate like a flower, and smooth like a knife. I was named after a parent’s friend’s wife. I don’t remember if I met her when she was alive. She was kind and beautiful I heard, and she was the ocean too. Lapping the shore, and out too soon like the tide. I don’t want to go out like the waves on the beach, fading over the water and seafoam. I want to leave an imprint on the world like footprints in the cement sidewalk. I like my names, I like their meaning. I like their differences, their contradictions. If I chose another, something else to describe myself by, I might choose Rain or Ember or Finch. The lights of embers stay imprinted in your mind long after the fire has burned out.