Names are precious things, but you’ve never been dear with yours. Most people keep theirs locked and loaded, but ever since you realized how to unlatch the small canister inside your chest you’ve taken yours out and turned it over uncertainly in your hands.

“Careful, you’ll lose it,” your dad said, a gruff well-wish. He’d never be caught dead with his latch open.

To be without a name was to be lost, but you’ve always felt a little lost anyway.

The first time a partner catches you with your name in your hands, she screams. The relationship doesn’t last long after that, and even after she moves out you keep your name locked away for months. It claws under your skin, biting and screaming. It’s a caged animal, a restless beast. There is nothing you can do to soothe it.

The second time you fall in love, you tell your partner before she can see it unwarned. You tell her about the hurt in your chest, the name that doesn’t fit inside your ribcage the way it should. She listens to you like no one ever has, and when you finish laying yourself bare she asks to see the feral thing inside your chest.

You’ve never shown it to someone, not on purpose, so to crack your chest open under her gaze and hold it out to her feels more intimate than any sex. When she extends her hand, you place the name in her palm.

“If you could have a new one, what kind would you like?”

Your answer pours out of you. You’ve never considered it before, and it’s all you’ve ever thought about. You tell her you want a name with gentler edges. One that blooms and flourishes where this one sticks and cuts. You want soft consonants and long vowels. You want the name to sound like someone like her, not someone like you.

She holds a hand to your cheek, still and rock steady as she knows you hate the feel of your own stubble. She asks if you trust her, and when you say you do, she slips your name into her pocket, kisses your brow, and steps out the door.

You expect being parted from your name to feel like agony, but instead you feel lighter than you ever have. It’s because you do trust her. You trust her, and you know that whatever she is doing she is doing it with love for you in mind.

Also, after years and years of suffering, that missing chunk of you feels something like pleasure, even though it’s merely the absence of pain.

Your sleep is easier than it has been in years.

In the morning, she kisses you awake with a new name in her hand. It’s everything you wanted, though it shies from your touch at first.

You have to ask her where she got it, and what became of yours. She places it in your palm without a word, and you notice blood under her fingernails, including one that was not broken when she pressed her palm to your cheek the night before.

No one would give up a name so beautiful so easily, you know.

You also know that your old name is dead.

It had never occurred to you that names could be killed. Yet, even when you think of your old name dead in some stranger’s chest, you have no space in you for grief amidst the wonder.

So you open yourself to it. You unseal your canister and let it sniff inside, and when it curls comfortably where you know it will now stay your eyes start to sting. When you close your chest again, a home more than a cell, it is so much more than the absence of agony.

You want to thank her, but words will never be enough. She laughs and brushes your tears aside, and you kiss each one of her bloodstained fingers. She rests her hand on your chest and whispers your new name, and you find that you feel sated as you never have before.

Author’s note

I wrote "Euonym" exactly two months after leaving my marriage. I'd become so used to pressing myself into a safer shape, that when I experienced being cared for again, it nearly shattered me. It's about understanding who you are. But it's also about accepting gentleness after feeling trapped.

Ria Hill

Ria Hill (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary, Jewish writer and librarian who lives in Toronto. Their work is primarily horror, with fiction appearing in several print anthologies and online magazines. They can be found online at riahill.weebly.com and on Bluesky and Instagram @riawritten.