The Truth Is I Never Left You

V. ALEXANDRA LYTTON REGALADO is co-founder of Kalina press, based in El Salvador, and is the author, editor, and/or translator of more than ten Central American-themed books. Her poems and stories have appeared in Narrative, Gulf Coast, Notre Dame Review, cream city review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. Winner of the St. Lawrence Book Prize, her full-length collection of poems, Matria, was published in 2017 by Black Lawrence Press.

WHAT’S YOUR NAME? the man in the airplane asked again. Violetta, I said. I was seven years old, and my mother and grandmother were sitting one row ahead, each one holding a twin on her lap, and my little brother was whining in the window seat. There was no more room, and so I had to sit alone. The man gave me a grandfatherly smile and offered me his window seat.

I didn’t like my name. Violetta wasn’t a proud bloom like the sunflower that shot straight up and turned its wide face to stare at the sun; Violetta was a shy flower that crouched in the shadowy corners of the garden. Violetta had furry leaves and flowers with bowed heads. Violetta, the color of a bruise, I thought, not Violetta, the color of royal robes.

But Violetta was also my great-grandmother, the first woman to fly an airplane in El