A Name The Wind Knows
The dresses on the rack were never mine.
Their seams whispered secrets I couldn’t keep,
stitched for girls who walked like petals in the breeze,
who folded themselves small enough to disappear.
I was never small. Never light. Never unseen.
They spoke my name before I ever did,
rolled it between their teeth like a prayer,
or a curse, or a rumor too sweet to let die.
I heard it in mouths I never met,
saw it scrawled in air, in whispers, in glances
that burned like fingerprints left too long in the sun.
They knew me before I knew myself—
or thought they did.
Shaped me in their stories, carved me from want,
from sin, from something softer than I was.
And I stood there, heavy-limbed, full-formed,
in a body the world had already claimed.
They called it a gift. A spectacle. A sin.
A thing to be wanted and feared,
a shape that belonged to the hands of strangers
long before it belonged to me.
Laughter echoes behind me, just out of reach,
a sound dressed in my name.
They say it like I belong to them,
like I am something that can be held
without ever being touched.
And I wonder—
what does it feel like to be unknown?
To step into a room and bring only yourself,
not a story already written in hungry mouths?
To be weightless, nameless, free?
The dresses on the rack will never be mine.
Their seams are too fragile,
and I have always been too much.
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