hubris is deadly
yet you wore it like armor
yet you wore it like armor
Would my name be so lovely, I wonder, if she knew who I was named after? A barbarian chieftain who rebelled against an empire, later held prisoner and executed by strangulation? The story, told as my father unclasped the leather ties of his baldric, resonates with me even now. I wanted you to understand loss, my father had said. Before you will ever have to feel it.
He had thought the naming, the story, the depth—he had thought all these things compounded into an experience, a lesson, that I would carry with me through life.
(Even now, face-to-face with a stranger who has no stake in me, I find the entire thing ludicrous. I feel, on a level so deep it seems ingrained within the fibers of my being, that I will never escape the legacy my father left. That I will always be him, stitched together innumerable, irrevocable experiences).
Externally, I do not miss a beat. “No. I am also a wanderer. I find it difficult to align myself to any particular nation on a basis of what time of day they worship.” My lips twist into a wry smile. She has stepped toward me; and now I step forward, toward the lapping waves and spreading sea-foam.
“And where are you from?”
He had thought the naming, the story, the depth—he had thought all these things compounded into an experience, a lesson, that I would carry with me through life.
(Even now, face-to-face with a stranger who has no stake in me, I find the entire thing ludicrous. I feel, on a level so deep it seems ingrained within the fibers of my being, that I will never escape the legacy my father left. That I will always be him, stitched together innumerable, irrevocable experiences).
Externally, I do not miss a beat. “No. I am also a wanderer. I find it difficult to align myself to any particular nation on a basis of what time of day they worship.” My lips twist into a wry smile. She has stepped toward me; and now I step forward, toward the lapping waves and spreading sea-foam.
“And where are you from?”
