If you give something a name,
it breathes.
Somehow life eases into its lungs,
blood flows like a well sprung from its heart,
its mind becomes real
with thoughts and emotions.
If you give something a name, it sings.
It starts to sing it story,
the one it wrote during its existence of silence, the one before anyone knew it was there,
it gives meaning to its name
because it was the name that gave it a voice. And what better thing to own,
what better thing to prove it's heartbeat true?
You gave me a name.
And I began to breathe again.
It's amazing how I never realized I was dead before you gave a title to these bones,
made them cry out in awe at wonder
and being knit together and able to pick up
the rest of its pieces.
I live to tell my story now, I live to give others names so that they might tell theirs.
There are times when I forget though,
forget what the silence felt like,
forget what the darkness did,
forget everything that made me grateful to breathe again.
I forget you sometimes.
And I am so close to going back
to being dead behind my eyes,
I am in danger of repeating my past.
And in forgetting, my story gets left behind, shoved into the back of my mind like a distant memory of where I came from.
But you,
you always find a way to bring me back
and in my sober moments I pray that
you will never stop calling me by my name,
if nothing else just to remind me
that I have one.
And therefore I am alive.
If I have that hope, that security,
I know that no matter how far I go
and how much of you I forget,
someone will always be there to whisper my story in my ear and sing my songs back to me.
So call me by name;
the one the I love and live by.
SK
