Your Name

In every universe, possible

and infinite, are we happy?

Are we in love?

In one universe, I meet you in a

crowded club, bass throbbing and

sweat slick limbs tangled like wicker

baskets. Your throaty laughter turns

my head to yours, your cheeks flushed

and freckled, and your wild eyes golden.

In your gaze, in this music, I am done for.

You see me, and like two violent waves

rolling into one, our bodies meet in the

middle. Hot hands on my hips, you rock

me into you, hard and brave, and like salt

into water I dissolve and die and dance.

You tell me your name, but I never hear

it over the chorus. We stay there, drunk

and nameless, for years or for an hour,

and I’ll spend weeks searching for you

on the Internet and in bars, but to no

avail.

In another universe, I meet you in college,

waiting in the hallway for class to begin.

You’re playing imaginary piano with your

calloused hands, fingers tapping your thighs,

your jaw sharp and serious and stubbled.

You chuckle when you fumble a chord,

and my body burns with the absence of you.

I have already decided that this semester

is ruined unless those hands ruin me first.

I ask you what song you’re playing, as if

I’d know the name of any composer, but

you tell me anyway. You tell me your name,

and that’s the name I remember, singing

it in my head like it’s a heavy note I can’t

outrun.

In another universe, our paths miss.

Only barely, our shoulders brushing on

a busy winter street, the warmth between us

immediate and then gone. I feel inexplicably

as if I’ve lost some great thing I cannot place.

In this universe, we never meet. I do not know

that this emptiness in my chest is actually

the mourning of you, someone whose face

I never treasured and whose name I never

learned.

In another universe, like Christmas lights

you glow. I’m killing my time, wandering

through a book shop, and there you are.

Your fingers trailing over shelves and spines,

your eyes dancing over titles, over names,

and I want so deeply to tell you mine. I’m no

great author. I have no story to share except

to ask you to write me into yours. You notice me,

asking me if you’re in the way. I’m too nervous

to tell you I find you so beautiful, your delicate

hands and warm eyes and broken nose so

pretty I’m already yours. All I can say is

no.

In another universe, we meet in high school.

You’re leaning against your locker, joking

with a friend about science fiction or about

love. It’s your laughter that draws me to you

like a bullet, but when you turn around and

notice me, your mouth parted in a soft O,

your eyes matching the burn of mine, I

extend my hand to yours in the hopes

that in one shake I can know you forever.

You tell me your name, and I practice it

in my room alone, savoring your honeyed

name on my tongue until I can call you

by it, loud across the hall, and when you

shout my name with that same devilish

grin, your voice claiming me like gold,

I pretend you’re taking attendance,

the best kind, reminding me that after

so many centuries of tortuous searching,

I’ve finally found a world where I get to be

yours.

In this universe, your name was upside

down. This was how I learned of you,

your name foreign and silly and mine

to butcher. The first word I spoke to you

was this upside down name, and it was your

soft laugh, the wrinkle of your nose, the

slight shake of your broad shoulders that

spelled the end for me. My heart was yours

as soon as I counted your freckles, my mind

was made as if a bed for you as soon as you

bared your crooked and perfect teeth. I had

been waiting so long for you. This feeling of

breaking and burning, sly winks and jitters,

overtook me like a forest fire. I offered my

hand to you, not to upright your name tag,

not to fix your name, but so that it could be

mine.

In this universe, I still lost you. Our paths

met and then missed and now there is no

trace of you, except your upside down name,

which is still mine to say when I dream of you.

Even though I have suffered the loss of you,

how lucky was I to meet you, to so suddenly

fall into a fiery and dangerous and upside down

love just by looking at you. How lucky was I,

even if it broke me, even if it was in vain,

to know your name.