At night he comes to me. The one without a name. He talks to me and tells me stories of things which time seems to have erased. Is he a dream or is he real. This boy who’s captured my appeal. Dark hair, dark eyes, and soft voice spoken, does he know the way I feel. I’m a shell yet to be broken, all my words going unspoken. Shy and coy, I must seem so. As he talks the night it grows. Unleashing stories to my mind. He tells me that he’s seen these things, a war of hate and shame, where men and women all were slaughtered, small children left to die. Where hopes were lost and salt was spilt, and crops will grow no more. Where troops did march across the land and left it no avail. Such things I learned from stories thus I willed for them each night. He came again and told me more, and back he came each night. Of men who painted bodies blue, and front lines made at sea. He told me of a thousand soldiers fended off in groups of three, and so the stories came and went, and each night there was more. He told me of men hanging high, from blunted spears, not rope or cord, and though this was not how all died, the most bleed out for days. He told me still of other wars, of men who killed their own. Through need and want and persecution, through lies and time and sword. Through blunted blade, and ax, and bow, through gun and barrel, wheel and bowl, through cup and dirt and coal. Through fire, wind, and water drownings, through lost heads of young girls. He saw this all and more he said, and each night there was more. I yearned to hear each story told, he knew that vary well.

Each night would end, we’d say good bye. I’d ask him for his name. He asked for me to give him one, but that I could not say. Instead I told him of my life, and how I came to be, ‘My name is Mirabella,’ I said, ‘I’m not as old as thi.’ Still with each night he came to me, and each ended the same. ‘A name’ he said, and begged of me, ‘a name is what I crave.’ Yet in the cast we bind to him, I could not give a name, and so the details of his life did dwindle down and few remained.

‘My father is a beast’ he said, as one night passed us by, and so the details of his life I knew would pass me by. ‘I know the way to make things right. I’ve seen enough, and it is time.’ Each day he’d make this clear to me, still I could not comply.

‘Your old of age and young of heart, and so you said yourself. A child there you still might be, and so I can not name you, see?’ and with these words he did not see, that names did not mean anything. That power comes from strength of will, and names aren’t meant to make you real.

He said I didn’t understand, he said that he was real, and now he comes and tells me still, he needs a name so he can feel.

‘You do not want a name.’ I said, ‘It would only harm you so. With so much pain you’ve seen through time, a name would destroy you so.’ Yet still he comes and begs to me, and says it’s time to feel. Still he comes and begs of me, a name to make him real.