I wrote my signature three times in the margins of a leatherbound notebook.

Within its curves live the only name my parents could agree on.

Erin Lee Shields

Erin Lee Shields

Erin Lee Shields

In the evenings of childhood, in the hollow of my room, I feel my mother’s lips.

My name on her tongue is trimmed with ribbons just as she intended. 

The ribbon of Degas’ ballerinas.

The little dancer. 

And that February, on winter’s outskirts, I feel my father’s hands. 

My name on his tongue is trimmed with ribbons just as he intended.

Blush and pale. 

He puts them in my hair.

Like kisses, like stained rosewood, and Botticelli’s half shell on which Venus stood. 

Like this, the ribbon weaves throughout each letter.

Like communion tablets, like garden air, calm as a moon. 

Like love, like chipped porcelain, like the incense they burn in Roman Catholic Churches.

Like this, the ribbon is braided tenderly into my head. Looping wool.

Over each strand are the hands of

My mother.

My father.

I walk from them wearing it as a veil.

Drape me in myself like a bride.

Drape me in nothing but my name. 

Barefoot, I stand, and the tide embraces my ankles.

I place the speckled conch to my ear, closely colored to that of my ribbon.

Accompanied by the soft crashing of the sea, I listen to a choir of a thousand seraphim.

They sing the only name my parents could agree on.

A hymn of a settlement wrapped in satin.