the power to address you

[Your Name]

You were named by folks you'd never met
before they'd ever met you.

As you grew they conditioned you into being
plosive or mellow or coarse or sibilant
regurgitated your character at you
through a select few phonemes
and you accepted these to be
your definition.
Soon you learned to trace your portrait
through half a dozen stylized shapes
and understood how sharp or how round
you were to be.

Years later you meet me
shake my hand in a manner of
speaking, tell me you are contained
in a voiced alveolar plosive
a rhotic vowel, a lateral liquid
a frontal and a nasal
and I try to capture you
inside a file inside my mind
where I'll endear you.

In mere seconds
I have judged you. I align you
next to other yous I've known
and subconscientiously
decide the sort of person
you must be.

I know now what you sound like
and I've ascertained the power
to address you
for when I announce
your signifier
you listen.

You listen
as I concatenate our worldlines
through my language
and your name begins to mean
something to me.

You've now laid claim
upon a tiny island of experience
where you etch yourself in sand
so when again your name is mentioned
I'll behold your visage
and relive the ways
you made me

feel.