I Do Not Need Another Name

I used to think
I needed another name
to become someone new.

As if love were a baptism—
someone else’s hands
pulling me from the water,
someone else’s voice
speaking me into being.

I used to believe
the stars were instructions.

That somewhere beyond
the edge of my own horizon
was a constellation
arranged specifically for me,

a person whose arrival
would make sense
of all the wandering.

So I kept sailing.

Past familiar moons.
Past warnings.
Past the places
where I should have dropped anchor.

I searched every horizon
for a light that might finally say,

There you are.

But somewhere between
the wreckage and the rebuilding,

I realized . . .
I was never lost.

I was only looking
for myself in places
that could never contain me.

So I stopped asking
the stars for directions.

I learned the sky instead.

I learned which stars
were mine to follow
and which were simply
beautiful from a distance.

I learned that a compass
does not need another compass
to know where North is.

And neither do I.

I am not an unfinished sentence
waiting for someone
to write the ending.

I am not half a map
waiting for another country
to complete the coastline.

I am not an empty harbor
waiting for a ship
to give the water purpose.

I have a name.
I have always had one.

And I like the way it sounds now
when I say it without waiting
for someone else to answer.

There is so much peace
in becoming someone
I do not need to escape from.

So let the stars keep their distance.
Let the ships come and go.
Let some horizons remain unexplored.

I no longer measure the worth of my ocean
by how many vessels choose to cross it.

I am happy here.

Not because someone finally found me,
but because I finally stopped believing
I needed to be found.

And if love comes, let it come
like a favorable wind, not a rescue.

Let it meet me already sailing.
Let it sit beside me beneath the same stars,
not as my north, not as my destination,
but as another traveler
who has learned the way home.

I will not give up my name for it.
I will not disappear into another person’s constellation.
I will not become smaller
so someone else can call me theirs.

I have crossed too many seas
to surrender my own coordinates now.

The world is wide.
The sky is wider.

And for the first time,
I do not need another name
written beside mine
to make the stars look beautiful.

I look up,
and the heavens are already enough.

So am I.