Tonight your name is too obscure to even make the phonebook, for lack of a landline to tie it to. It’s the kind of name wanted criminals spend hours trying to think up but can’t, an easy name to forget or hide behind. You haven’t heard it spoken loving or excited for years now, only said like the slam of a door, at court dates, at the DHS, at an old friend’s front door. You celebrate most of your birthdays alone, your only presents coming from the alleys, you are only noticed when you get in the way. Tonight, as you look for a shadow to hide in you are no one.
But tomorrow, you will be more popular than you’ve ever been before. A man that looks like a lazy skinhead will blame you for everything that goes wrong for him from here on out, the glory he never got, the job he could have lost. Anyone who ever stood in a line with you in the snow will turn your sighs and casual comments into a story of how close they got to you. The anarchists that mocked you for believing in god, the ministers that wouldn’t talk to you for breaking all his rules, the communists that ended their conversations with you when they saw you didn’t have the money for a paper, they will all speak about you like their hearts are lit fuses and they won’t lie. The mayor will speak your name elegant as taps, like something he shouldn’t be sorry for but is anyways, and slam poets will win thousands of dollars just for telling your story. Printing presses will be carved in the shape of the sound of your name then slammed down time after time after time for months to come, and your face will be pasted onto street lamps to peel off with the storms. People you’ve never met will lie in bed crying about you, how they wish they could have saved you. And people you’ve never met will shout the sound of your name by the hundreds, to bring up the rage, to give them strength. Glass will break for you, cops will bleed for you, banks will burn for you, the world might even shake for you, and your family will never love you more.
You will not be remembered for how you lived, you will be remembered for how you died. You will not be mourned for what you’ve done, you will be mourned for what was done to you. But till the boys in blue make a name for you, you are no one, all lowly and alive. Your name is just a name like any other. The world would rather have you as a martyr than a friend.