The Boat Carved From Forgotten Names

On a distant shore, a boatmaker carved vessels from the names people had discarded—nicknames, ancestral names, names they wished they had grown into. Each boat carried a different weight depending on the strength of the name it embodied. A traveler set sail on a boat carved from a name he had refused to acknowledge. As it drifted, he felt the weight of his true self returning, letter by letter, until the name felt like a heartbeat inside him.