The Story of a New Name
Like submersion in cool water after a run in August, this name, the one I don’t yet speak, makes me shiver. Metaphors aside, it came to me in the shower. My body is my body, a thing I try to ignore but one that I know doesn’t define me. When it is just me and my body and my pine-scented soap, I can feel suds on my skin and revel in that: sensation, divorced from perception. My body is my body.
I stood there, warm water raining down on my bare skin, and like Athena cracking out of Zeus’s skull, mature and ready for life, the name appeared in my head. I said it out loud, felt it push through my teeth, and I felt a new kind of aliveness. There are now pages in my journal with this name written in cursive, traced over and over. Like I have a debilitating crush, but the person I’m in love with is myself.
And I’m not ready to share this infatuation with the world. It’s fragile, this name, but when I think about it, when I write it down, it sends a thrill up my spine, a lover’s touch, and I know that this name will wait for me. I can hold onto it, save it, keep it for myself for as long as I need to. It smiles at me, warm and inviting, and it makes me feel like I always have been who I always will be.
C. M. Green is a Boston-based writer with a focus on history, memory, gender, and religion. Their work has been published in fifth wheel press, Roi Faineant, and elsewhere. Their writing can be found at cmgreenwrites.com.
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