Names

I get overzealous about my name.

I get overzealous about my name.

Sordid things burning on the edge of my lips, the way my mouth moves around it. My tongue and saliva grip syllables pointed at me like daggers. There is nothing sharper than the pull of my muscles. It is mine therefore I can feel it in its glory.

Letters unscramble and they glow. Words finally belong to me in a way that matters. There is an entity holding itself out for me to hold. I grab it and it grabs me back.

My mother calls my name and it is fierce, she is strong and I am not. She shortens it, as does my grandmother and my oldest friends.

Pieces of myself we both cling on to like thorns to frabic, equal parts fragile and infinite. Things we made with love even if we never admitted to it.

I am a girl pressed down, a want stuffed to nothing, a thing ready to crawl over and hold, inching closer and closer to a finite being I will be able to look in the mirror and finally recognize.

He calls my name and it is fire, something so desirable is but a weapon in his mouth.

Girl, pulled apart.

Gawked at, toyed with.

Thing with fire in her cheeks, splinters in her veins. Things most embarrassing and undeniable like textbook definitions or consciousness.

What do you do when the most sacred part of yourself becomes the most public? The most vulnerable? Who am I without this base? How will I recognize myself? The meaning loses itself in the fire and I am broken down to nothing but a curl in lips.

Words are invented with meaning. They teach you this in school.

He cannot strip me of something I have already firmly put together by myself. The hour hand moves and with each passing tick I become less afraid the shape of the word will mean nothing if it leaves his mouth again.