Daily writing prompt

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

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“That’s actually my middle name?” I clarified over some official paperwork, years into life. She’d assured me for a long time that yes, this absolute mess was legally, actually my middle name. She’d insist later that as a six year old I’d been so adamant about changing it that lying to me that she had was simply the only option.

It says something about the chaotic wonder of who my mother was that:

1. I questioned that this thing I’d been told was fact for — essentially — my entire life
2. I actually did expect the answer to be “of course”

She glanced up, blinked, and then smiled in a way today’s vernacular calls “shit eating.”

“Yes,” she said, “yes of course it is. Eberle Star Nessy… uh, yeah.”

I stared at her.

“Oh my god,” I said.

I was, like. Sixteen.