What’s in a Name?

I traced my fingers down the length of the bone. I felt the damage to your skull, the way the bone splintered and caved inward. I spent hours in that lab learning every inch of you, scribbling the notes in my leatherbound book. I looked at the ends of your ribs, the epiphyses of your clavicles. I felt the wear on your teeth. I ran my fingers over the rough edges of infection in your jaw. The stains left by
mosses and earth made it look like watercolor running down your bones. You had been face up, at least for a while. And you’d been hurt before. I could see it in the swells of formerly-broken bone along your ribs, the bumps and long-since rounded edges.

I put down the notebook. I logged into the database, a different stack of papers next to me. You were different. There was more of you. The photos were old. Your notes were typed on a typewriter. I saw your hair – as patchy as it was, I knew it had once been beautiful. Your face, beneath the mottled, slipping skin, was peaceful. Your eyes were closed. I sifted through the photos, examining
the swell and bend of your fingers, the markings on your body. I wanted so desperately to say I knew who you could be.

I closed my laptop and pulled out another box of bones from the shelf.

I knew everything I could about you. I knew your age, your sex, your race, your likely place of origin.

I knew you didn’t have an easy life. I knew all the things we make ourselves, all the labels society gives us. I knew you in death more than most people know each other in life.

But I never knew your name.