Identity – in response to Grace Taylor’s Spoken word.

At two years old

My grand-father’s tombstone went up

Leonard Peters died in 1991

We washed out hands and feet in the ocean

Of the Matapouri coast

And I asked my mother if “Poppy was still sleeping?”

Years later, I discovered that was not his real name at all

Leonard- for a Maori- How could I have been so naive.

I still carry a white-ified last name, chosen by my ever adaptable

Poppy.

My laconic but loving father

Does not speak of Maori culture,

Or a Maori tongue, Says you don’t have to Hongi

and “don’t eat anything except potatoes and bread at the Marae

So you don’t get sick”

in terms of blood quantum
I have always considered myself predominantly white
but with brown skin, brown eyes and wavy brown hair

I know I am seen as "Other"

Sent to boarding school in Auckland

At age 12, I was one of the only brown students in my year

Always a lover of words,  I slowly ascended to be top of Latin.

Now I feel  a visceral shame that it was not

Te Reo Maori,

My father, a practical lawyer envisioning that I may wear court dress and wig,  thought
"Latin will be more useful"

Latin, the base of other romantic languages.

Offering a thorough understanding of syntax and grammar

I soon found the word useful to be dependent on intentions

Identity

I avoid making statement on it

Because I cannot say I relate it more to my 

Maori heritage

or Scottish heritage 

It slips to the back of my mind,

Like my warrant of fitness, like thank you letters I have forgotten to write.

It breathes only in the shadow of my subconscious