nameless
by Shira Lipkin
They cut my name from me when I was but seven weeks old. Slim silver knives and fishing hooks digging it from my deepest places murmuring to themselves as they severed me from my self; sewing me up with thick black thread, coarse as a wild horse's mane. For my own protection, they said, so none could control me, capture me, harm me — But it pulls, that thread, it binds me, and names slide from me like oil, slick, uncatchable. The scars run down my back, neat diagonal slashes deformed by scar tissue; I might have had wings, my lovers said. Trailing fingers down ridges, licking the silver-shining trails left by names as they fell away. I might, if not for being opened, torn, defiled, stitched upon myself — I do not know who I might have been.
September 24th, 2012