I used to think a name was a small, sturdy room. A place I could enter whenever the world became too large. But names change in other people’s mouths. Memories loosen at the edges. Even the face in the mirror belongs, for a moment, to whoever is looking. So I ask myself: what remains when the labels fall away? Perhaps not an answer. Perhaps only the quiet act of noticing—this breath, this choice, this life passing through me, and still, somehow, mine.
