Photo by the author.

Names.
Wrapped around metaphors.
The sisters thought their names were simple.
Simplification. Miminalism. Bland. Easy to manuver, passing by the skylines of the city.

They arrived, here and there, and they found out two things. First, the devil doesn’t wear red. Secondly , that their names are noodles. I am taking about fideos baratos.

When they though they had one name,
those names expanded like noddles never returning to their original state.There is not such a thing as recyclable dominican nombres when you are out of the country. They will pronunce your name like they are eating a computer keyboard and you are the black ink of the printer…getting wasted by injustice or worse, they will say your name like they had put their brains in a lavadora just making weird sounds…mostly on purpose. There’s nothing in between.

They thought four letters name weren’t all that.
They thought people will make an effort.
They thought people will not try to rip their tongues out trying to say one “r.”

Sisters, dears sisters, hermanas,
let them mispronounce our nombres from our grandmothers which are passing from generation to generation in the mantel de la cocina. They don’t understand our hair or our skin, much less our historias.