Once there was a man

who stood tall at the head of the room

teaching numbers; he greeted us at the door

as we entered each day

and he called me Hope. But

it was longer and flowing and in

another language more musical.

He’d switched an a to an e in there,

making it a song closer to my birth name, somehow.

No one had ever called me Hope, only him. And,

truth be, it wasn’t exactly hope, but a name somewhere between

mine and more.

Between what is and what becomes, approaching without end.

Something between.

The man who taught numbers, years after I knew him,

he killed himself. The exact place where always now

enfolds him.

The man who called out Hope,

his pain outlived him.

My tears and thanks fall towards him today.