What if your name is not yours
but the absent father, a stranger
written on your worksheet,
a glyph on your face
carried through the halls
of West Street Elementary
where the teachers gaze
out the great glass doors longingly,
perpetual pale light at either end,
and you carry a giant French Horn,
the school’s horn on loan,
its swirl a beautiful coil of gold
opening like a bell and it calls to you
though it is heavy
bigger than you
and you stop every block to rest
to change hands and deep inside
the case the dark velvet form
holds the instrument
and you are quiet as survival
walking dreamlike
past the crossing guard
on a street you think of
as your journey
because you walk alone
and everything that happens to you
happens on this route
between name and apartment,
the grey one that leans
sideways and gets Condemned
in a pale paper
pasted over a window
and when you live there
you listen through the walls,
your whole body an ear,
and though you quit later
because you have
the wrong embouchure
and don’t practice enough,
the horn glints
behind your shoulder
in silent wait.
