I didn’t want to write a poem about my name because
it is always about my name. How I am in line

at the LAX immigration desk, my father
holding 10 bags in each hand, my mother answering the wrong

English, with hundreds of others waiting
with their own names. The officer, writing

without a second thought, switching
the order of my name – I am reborn,

wrong, under the blaring white lights and bare floors
of LAX, dizzy from the metal tomb flight, my bowl cut hair

wet in my own acid, rushed out
into the deafening car horns, uncle waving

his American flag. And with the years going by I keep wanting
to know if this is the moment where it went

wrong. You got the wrong
person, I wanted to tell my life. I was born with a different

destiny, a birth not so startled
by grief. But of course, what my ancestors

have known, gone before, their lives falling apart
to an uncontrollable

history, what I am learning now, as all
those who come after, each

with their own names, will have to learn,
again, that life

is no series of destinies, or wills, only
accidents, American

in its careless and apathetic violence.
Shaped by that, we make the best

out of what has come to call on us, tunneling
into ourselves to find roots, with no names,

only what we create. Call that destiny.