Today's prompt was to take one of the chapter titles from this book and write a poem on it. Brilliant!
Our Real Names
Our real names were lost to us;
sometime, somewhere, in the embryonic state
of becoming.
In childhood days frolicking through woods
and wonderlands, we knew them. Heard
their syllables soft on a honeysuckle breeze,
incantations of love, identity, peace.
There was no hurry, no connotations
of unease. We were young, carefree.
Luminous, our way.
As we got older, we shunned our real names.
We were ‘them’, we were ‘they’, 'us';
a refracted image of a whole myopia,
abbreviated to pronouns, possessed.
We did not know who we were,
what we could do. Generalised, rationalised.
No one called us by our real names.
We learned villains liked to steal our names.
Stripped of them, we were paupers of the soul.
Know my name and know me, that’s what the fairytale
says. Call me by my real name and I am yours;
you will have power over me.
Without a name, blame came.
Love looked the other way.
Now, remembering, we call out
our real names in the empty canyon of time.
No one hears.
Is it too late?
They echo back to us, again and again.
Whispers, wails, whimsical memories.
We are dumb with their profundity.
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