Pōhaku – “Legacy”

My name is me and I am my name. It is the legacy of a foreigner and a native. It stepped upon and rolled. I am tied to the end of sticks to throw. I am placed upon my brothers to build walls of war. It is unbroken and enduring. My name is the rock that has founded cities, and destroyed them, with the fiercest gravel and the most content arrows.

Partially owed to my great-grandfather, who’d take me and my siblings to McDonalds on Tuesdays after school. A prophecy for every hour at my grandfather's house that I'd ram my head into a tree trunk and stumble up unscathed. The legacy he left behind for my boulders of shoulders to carry and pass on sits upon them now as I trek across the treacherous mountain of life.

It is mispronounced every which way and awed at by strangers who mispronounce it, in both confusion and admiration. It confused my brothers by my family. In English it is a simple stone, in Hawaiian it is the greatest of the Koʻolau mountain range. It is the prediction of my future, as a strong and stoic man.

My name is my pride, and my embracing, it will never be changed. It is forever carved in stone, into the enduring rock upon a verdant mountain.