Robin Park
1.
I was christened Robin in English
class by my teacher Jeremy.
I must have been (or become)
bird-shaped that day: moulting
down the edges of my before-
name. I folded away my
previous self until it fit
only in my mother’s mouth.
2.
Jeremy must have created me
because everyone says
I do not look like anything
else. I try on different names
which feels like playacting
in a cardboard photo booth
with face cutouts. I try to paint a self-
portrait from memory (and cannot).
3.
I sift the web for a portal, clicking
on images of grey-haired Jeremys
with smiles that flicker beneath
my eyelids before sleep. I interrogate
each face: what they saw, if they
remember the face they might
have named, if I am what they
expected of me. They all stare back,
unable to call me what I am.
Robin Park is a poet based in Oxford. She is an alumna of the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective and Barbican Young Poets.
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