I have known your elbows for years; the way they rest on windowsills,
the laugh that arrives like a weather change, the exact shape of your silence.
I can call up the map of your habits quicker than your birthday; I can find your favourite story in the dark.
But your name is a key I have misplaced and cannot admit I’ve lost.

I could invent a reason: a new phone, a move, a moment when I wasn’t listening,
but the truth is smaller and meaner: memory is a cupboard that rearranges itself without permission.
So I stand at the edge of conversation with a smile like a coat buttoned at the throat,
and I hope you will say it first or gift me the small rescue of an introduction.

Sometimes I practise the shapes of it in the privacy of my mouth, sound-testing vowels like a locksmith.
Sometimes I let the silence hold what it will, and offer instead the names I do remember: coffee, Tuesday, that joke about rain.
If you laugh and tell a story, I collect details like coins and pretend that rich is the same as honest.

I’ve known you too long to ask your name.
One evening you’ll drop it like a pebble in a glass and I will fish it back into the light.
For now, I keep the rest of you in my pockets and wait until courage borrows a question that is not shame.