not one but two, not two but three, three names I have, maybe four, could there be more, how can I be sure I wondered now and then before, not one but two but three but four and maybe more… there’s the name I never was so instead became the compromise I am… there’s the nicknames that’ve dogged me through the years though most left littering the verges of a past misspent, not many though they are, they are and have been and will ever be until…there’s my pseudonyms, surely not my names at all except they are too, become integral to the time, the place, the when and where behind which lay this very same face, some young, some old, some older still onward into footsteps taken… there’s two for my first and not three as some assume and much to my chagrin some do… but am I my name or is my name me?… have I become it or have I made it fit me like a glove, let it burrow into me, wound itself inextricably until the seam is near-invisible, does it grow and age and die just the same as I do?… does it stumble awkwardly from my mouth or from the lips of others?… when I hear it, even after all these years of being me and still am me, it still sounds strange… how often do I use it, this thing, this tag, this label, this flag, what is mine, my own, me, my name?… rarely… and to this day still feels strange to hear myself say it, something I avoid at all costs when possible… am I am who I am who my name tells me I am?… my name, names, the one, the two, the three, the four and even maybe more where the bones are buried underneath the floor…
© 2018 robert greig
