Namesake

A Fellow Outcast. I'd like to think that when the name came to me it was some epiphany. Some incredibly profound moment. But I'd be lying to myself. It came to me the way quiet revelations do. It was a whisper over my skin, an understanding in my pen. I'd reached the end of my first poetry book, Angels & Inner Demons, and an Author's Note just felt right. But how to sign off? N.Avila seemed too formal. Nikki Avila felt too unoriginal. In essence I was more than myself. Some of these poems were from a different life, a different me and so the note shouldn't be written from I. I thought it should be from someone that was everyone. An outcast. A Fellow Outcast. Because who among us has never felt like a pariah? Who had never felt the strains of a box in which they could not fit? If I could reach the outcast in everyone and remind them that they were not alone than my task would be filled. It became so simple when I thought of it that way. I was moments away from signing The Outcast, but that wouldn't be true. We are, each and every one of us, an outcast in one way or another. Who was I to own the name Outcast? But A Fellow Outcast? Well that was alright. That was inclusive. That was something I could live with.