Naming

The beloved 

doesn't 

need to live. The beloved

lives in the head.

-Louise Gluck

From that conversation and others that came before, I am able to see that your proclivity for naming things stems from your almost instinctive tendency to dig up graves for what you refuse to deal with.

Pain, memories, losses. Things that matter enough to be seen, acquiesced, named. Guitar strains you once loved, warmth you once felt, dreams you once conjured, luminous tears turned to dim aches, questions you once asked, over and over.

Names. Faces.

You close your eyes and push, push downward, push, until they're deep enough, until they're gone enough.

So they haunt you in your dreams, people your untold tales, disappear into deliberately forgotten landscapes, blur into uncertain photographs.

You end up drawing blanks. Blanks you're unable to fill.

For C--