I do not remember my own name
so whenever I hear a voice calling,
I turn my head.
Unmake the bed
open the window
When I returned from Paris
burning behind me
I selected a single letter
to tattoo upon my chest.
In the wind, my name sounds like a vowel.
Everyone keeps asking what the baby will call me.
I find myself worrying about my nipples,
how their textures will change.
It does not take long to recite the list of names
of those who stay in touch.
I’m losing language in my sleep.
I open my mouth, and words are plucked
from my tongue. Before I was broken,
I planned to inherit the garden.
A guitar, dice, the scent of pipe smoke.
We folded our legs beneath our dresses
and perched on the grass delicately.
Back in the days when we knew our own names.
Copyright © 2020 by Valerie Wetlaufer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 24, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“My work has long focused on names—those we call ourselves and those others know us by—and how that piece of identity shifts throughout our lives. This poem comes from a series on language and memory, the slippery nature of both as we age.”
—Valerie Wetlaufer