I say your name like a prayer. It protects me from conversations that I can’t bear to hear, to rehash with myself or others. I can’t write it without unloading reverence into syllables and letters. I praise vowels for the ease they provide to your name and abhor them in the same breath. It is far too easy to let it slip off my tongue, an eternal mantra. I have no control over words that spill past my lips.
           I’m condemned to a phrase for the rest of my life. And the only complaint I have is that I wish you had a prettier name. Or maybe one less biblical. Sanctimonious. Transcendent. It keeps lifting me up and pulling down, down to where I’m forced to gaze upon it as a savior. Pleading to get me out a world where your name doesn’t mean everything. I can’t bear to be somewhere your aphorisms aren’t holy. Take me Home, where your words are ambrosia. The only food I will ever need.