His Name is John
His Name is John --for my brother If you hadn’t named him you could say it wasn’t meant to be. If you had another boy, you could wipe the slate clean-- use the name again. But you never had another boy... John is your name too and sometimes when someone calls, you hear an echo. On weak days you listen and succumb to the sadness which is a lake you fall into fully clothed and emerge cold to the bone. At such times you wonder who he might have been, how he would have sounded when he laughed. He spent less time out of the womb than in it. Now, no-one in the family mentions the baby. So, each year you kneel, light a candle, say his name.