“Frances” by Kika Dorsey
1.
Father said he regretted naming me Frances. He said he would have treated me better had he not named me after his abusive mother. My nickname was Fran, which rhymes with ban, clan, or tan. I never tanned, having inherited his white skin, riddled with freckles.
2.
His mother was named after freedom, but I was as free as the feel of Eigengrau, that color of gray you see when you open your eyes in the dark, a gray hue like the color of Twykenham Street in South Bend, Indiana, where my first cat died under the tires of a car, their tread as gray as licorice when it melts on my tongue.
3.
F is for fuck you, r for release, a for and (and the soft paws against my cheek, the and of my sex), n for no, for night, for naked, (like my white skin in the abandoning to sunlight, burning).
4.
I ridded myself of that name. I crossed narrow bridges over ditches when the sun scorched the gray sky and turned it blue. The waters of the ditch overflowed.
5.
He said he would have treated me better. When I was a child, I wanted names like Lisa, Laura, names with the letter l because the sound was languid, luscious, was the sound of water rolling toward the cornfields of Indiana, flooding, the gray streets protected by their own puddles that collected like letters against the gutters of names and then flowed downward.
6.
My name dried out and I abandoned it. My father died. My freedom is a freckle, how the sunlight darkens you, or the color of his red hair. My freedom is a cat crossing the street, narrowly missing a car. It is the sound of midnight, its melodic curses and negligent need, nettle that can sting, and the way noon burns so languidly, light like the water of the ditch rippling after my forgone childhood.
7.
Oh, Frances, I do not miss you.
About Kika Dorsey
She/Her/Hers
Kika Dorsey is a poet and fiction writer in Boulder, Colorado. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature and her books include the chapbook Beside Herself and three full-length collections: Rust, Coming Up for Air, and Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger, which won the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times. Currently, she is a lecturer at the University of Colorado in literature and creative writing. Her novel, As Joan Approaches Infinity is published by Gesture Press in 2023. In addition, she works as a writing coach and ghostwriter. In her free-time she swims miles in pools and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.