Sophomoric, I know,
But I want to say that in the trajectory of my existence,
though I’ve met a million women with the name you bear,
it is because of you there is affinity…and so every time
I hear it, I take pause, brief as it may be, to remember you,
and wonder why your name should be given to anyone
other than you, it is you after all who takes it to its greatest
meaning and makes it truly mean and this is your name,
that to which Stein spoke when she wrote, “Rose is a rose is a rose.”
Sight or sound that which we call a rose by any name, flails
in comparison to you, the thought of you, the idea that is conjured
when affinity arises and I think of you. Now, this is probably
where it gets sophomoric, or most sophomoric. I want to write your name
like a thousand times in the sand-that would take a while, so it’s not likely,
I guess, but it’s in me. I want to yell, sing it, proclaim it, like it’s magic,
like it means you and is you. Like by writing it and pronouncing it, repeatedly,
it’ll bring me closer to you, though I know that’s not true. But still,
I can’t shake the notion, that even though the name is not yours alone-
no matter how much I believe it should be, that it is the way to invoke you
and know you, a first step in becoming aware of the complexity and intricacy
of you, as if the syllables and their juxtaposition were a repositioning
of meaning and sound in an attempt to approximate you, some version of you
pointing heavenward to recreate the celestial impression you leave behind
in your passing, in the manifestation of your presence and the grace it carries.
Like an adolescent, I want to take you put you an altar and worship there,
leaving behind and perhaps attempting to forget the scars of time
and the rust and pain I’ve suffered before you, before coming close to you,
close to here, where I stand before you. Where I feel this, and this is in me,
though I know delusion and disillusion and feel they are two sides to the same coin,
or the same coin as it rusts and is thrusts into sea-salt tides, the kind, after which
you dry your eyes, or attempt to, as the years pass and you continue to mend
trying not to bend like the reed that cracked you when you were young.