Impression

Your say your name means
nothing to you.
Just a name like a thousand others
but to me your name
is a dancer bending close
or a signet in the fold of a swans wing.

Even when your face is crumpled like
crunched newspaper and anger spills out of
every pore, even then your name
curls up in my pocket and lies safe in my fingers.

Sometimes I see the little boy
who was you and whisper that
the walls of your house won’t always
shake and thunder around you.

It is as if you have always been with me.
Your name imprinting itself
like a fingertip in clay.