Lyric

A woman outside the pharmacy

Called me by a smaller sound

The one my mother used

When my shoes were never tied

I turned too late to answer

Her basket full of pears

She smiled into my face

And saw a boy still standing there

They Knew My Childhood Name

Before the city changed my mouth

Before I learned to introduce myself

Like proof I had moved out

The barber said, “You got tall”

Though I had stopped growing years ago

His scissors slept in blue disinfectant

Beside the radio

He asked about my father

Then looked down at the floor

Not because he did not know

But because he knew much more

There are places where your past

Still answers for you first

Where every window keeps a version

You have not rehearsed

I smiled with borrowed manners

Held my coat against the rain

A grown man passing through a town

That kept the child’s name

Near the school gate

Someone waved from a truck

I lifted my hand

Without knowing who he was

Red gym shoes

A summer haircut

Milk money in my sleeve

The hill behind the temple

Where I learned how to leave

No one was trying to hurt me

That was what made it hard

Their kindness opened every door

I had carefully left ajar

I had spent years becoming

A name with edges and weight

But here, I was still called softly

From the other side of age

There are voices that remember

What you survived by losing

They hand it back without warning

Like something you should be using

So I walked home through the evening

With my new name kept inside

And the old one following after

Small, familiar, still alive