The Name of a Man I Have Never Known
Whose name is a tiny part of mine
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet — William Shakespeare
A name is just a name, right?
But this is a different name.
Have you ever known a name that is close to your heart, whose part of name is even there in your name, but you hardly know the person who possess that name?
It is hard to write something about someone I have never known.
Someone who I harness as a mystery on my skin, yet his heat flows comfortably in my melancholy bloodstream.
I always thought I would hear his voice — which unexpectedly has the perfect amount of huskiness to say goodnight — that echoes, floats through the room as he blows out the light on the bed-stand beside me. I would see his haggard and worn out cheekbones with heavy eyelids that radiate pools of gold and always hang behind his brownish horn-rimmed glasses. The lines on his face showed how much laughters and smiles he had shared to many, many people, but me.
But then again, everything I just wrote is just a perfect figment of imagination of an old portrait of me in your arms that I am holding in my hand, drowning into a restless night, trying to understand that perhaps he had done the best he could, or just enough. Just enough.
I didn’t know how hard was his call from the moment it had begun or the moment it had ended.
Sometimes I imagine we would sit together, drink coffee, and avoid the towering wall the world put between us.
Maybe I would say my deep gratitude because you were the first person who taught me what a goodbye means. I would thank you for letting me fall alone so I could pick myself up. I would celebrate your absence that allows me to love more than I expected I could.
Though I cannot recall vividly the moment he fliched and disappeared through the threshold of our house when I was still 3 and I could not shrink away in my bed like I am doing right now, I know he is still there.
He is there surrounded by love from his two little angels. I know they are not me and he is not mine anymore. But I could at least be certain that the photograph I am holding shows me that I was once his little angel too.
I will always make sure that he is worthy of a crown in my heart with the firmament I have laced sincerely to the force he left behind in my last name.
The name of a man I have never known.
