Your Name Was My Favorite Word—Until It Wasn’t

I used to carve it into fogged shower glass with one careful finger. Whisper it to my pillow like a prayer. Let it roll around my mouth like the last sip of good wine—*your name*, a sacrament in three syllables.

Now it sits in my throat like a rusted blade.

I discovered the shift gradually:
- **Phase 1:** Flinching when someone else said it (a barista, a telemarketer, *her* laughing at a party)
- **Phase 2:** Practicing saying it aloud until the letters lost all meaning
- **Phase 3:** Realizing I’d forgotten which syllable you stressed when angry

The final betrayal came at the DMV. The clerk asked for my emergency contact. My pen hovered. For the first time in ten years, my hand wrote *someone else’s name* without trembling.

I expected grief.

What came was quieter—like when a song you’ve heard too often suddenly sounds hollow. Like when a childhood home, revisited, smells of strangers.

I trace the shape of your name in the dust on my dashboard. The consonants don’t fit together right anymore.

Funny how love letters
turn into obituaries
turn into
just words.

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Devastating Details:
- **The DMV scene** - Brutal bureaucracy of heartbreak
- **Syllable stress memory** - Intimacy’s erosion measured in linguistics
- **Dashboard dust tracing** - The ghost of old habits