My name—
always spoken, always summoned—
yet only when I am far away
does it rise, like breath,
to the surface of the world.

Sitting here, watching you,
I see only the name I once had—
and the one I will wear tomorrow.

When I was you,
I did not know my name.
Within the name,
the one who calls it
has already forgotten.

You and I—
we have both forgotten it.

And yet,
the name circles me still,
calling,
as I call it back.

It echoes
in the quiet folds of memory,
a fragile thread
unraveling through
the noise of becoming.

I am not the name I answer to.
I am the absence it leaves behind.
I am the question
the name can never contain.

– Note:

This poem was born from the quiet tension between identity and distance—between the name we are given and the self we become. In moments of solitude, I’ve come to realize that a name is not merely a label, but a vessel of memory, longing, and transformation. It is spoken by others, often when we are far away, and it echoes through the folds of time like breath returning to the body.

“My Name” reflects the paradox of selfhood in modern complexity: how we forget ourselves in others, how we are shaped by relationships that dissolve, and how the act of naming can both reveal and obscure who we are. The poem moves through layers of memory and silence, tracing the fragile thread of identity as it unravels and reforms.

In writing this, I sought not to define the self, but to honor its mystery. The name we answer to may not be the name that holds us. And yet, in the act of calling and being called, something eternal stirs—a question that cannot be contained, but must be lived.

© TaeHun Yoon, 1981 & 2025