Let us go, then.

Breathe in the city lights and warm spring midnights. Taste the sound of cars and number the constellations. Look past Cygnus reflected in the river and dip a paddle into the current, and then

you

are

home. 

Days and nights of dreaming of might-have-beens and the possibility of walking the streets of a strange city on a different continent alone.

Until next year. 

My tea tastes like sawdust and despair. 

According to superstition, there is a deep magic in the naming of someone’s true name.

Isis became the most powerful of the Egyptian pantheon because she learnt Ra’s true name and gained his powers.

If someone names your name in a dream, they gain control over you. Even God was bound by his names.

A name is what differentiates us from others.

It is one thing that we, as humans, believe is truly ours, even if someone is one of a million Annas or Sarahs or Nguyens or Mohammeds.

It is the one thing that allows us to shape-shift.

.