That small dent
in the end of my nose?
An homage to a pock-marking
illness in childhood and to
the good aim of my neighbor
with a rock as he took the scab
clean away with one throw.
Left me with the divot scar
and my first inkling
that it might be,
at some point,
considered ugly.

But not to me,
not then at least; I wore
that perfect circle
as a proud badge of
surviving a scrape —
and later on,
when my neighbor died,
dragged by a mundane car
down a mundane street?
It was his only memorial,
the only mark he left on earth
in his eight short years here.
I honor the scar —
no ugliness in it, relic of
one violent moment
of art and skill.

When they have
no set name for us
they call us “beings,”
a simple designation
that what we are
is what we do
and what we do
is be. 

Depending on
where they see us and how
we are being, we might
instead become
“angels” or “demons.”
They don’t see
that we’re the same “beings”
named, renamed, named…

We don’t have much to say
about the choices they make
when they call us up.  
We show up.
We are.  They decide
what it means.

Don’t blame us for that —
that’s up to them.
A being is just what is,

and the naming of it
is how their past
alters their present
as it tries to own their future.