Names are strange things

Names are strange things
They have no weight, yet they are the heaviest things in the world
When you say a name out loud, it's like pulling a dead body out of its grave
Not the person themselves; No! but their shadow comes back
The same shadow you thought had melted away in the sunlight of that last day, years ago
The name of a mother who doesn't call anymore. The name of a friend now lost in the noise of someone else's life. The name of someone you loved who left. Just going through these names feels like pulling a stone up from the bottom of a well. It's not a stone, but your hands still get tired
Reality hits you once
But a memory hits you a thousand times
The memory comes, sits by my bed, and when I wake up in the morning, it's still there
And the key to all of that memory is just one thing: a name

If names didn't exist, maybe we would forget, But names stay!
Like a small hook inside my chest. Every time the name comes, the hook pulls. The pain isn't from the person themselves
it's from remembering that they no longer belong to this moment
Some names we scream into empty rooms Some we whisper to the wall. Some we don't even say to ourselves
and those are the heaviest of all