Knox My True Name
We moved as wind; we moved
as water; we came and went
like deer picking clean a field at dusk. We lived
in the unseen margins. We slipped through
the cracks in walls and keyholes
of memoryless cities like smoke.
They told me we were reaching
for something pure and so I reached.
They said the only path to purity was to be
absolutely free and the only way
to achieve that was to never stay
put. To be still was how
the Beast caught you and chewed
you up in its teeth. Made you
servant to glowing screens and ephemeral signals.
Sapped your will. Robbed you
of your untamed birthright.
So maybe a couple of months at a commune
in Arkansas, then picking avocados in California
until we had just enough money for a rebuilt
Jasper V8 that Ratchet and Hawk would drop in one
of our two RVs, then working for cash off the books
as day laborers in Florida or selling firewood in Louisiana
or weed and shrooms in Wyoming for gas money
to the next place, the next place, the next place.
Never an entire season anywhere. No addresses.
No phones. No tablets. No ID cards. No school. No government
records. No bank accounts. No real names. No vaccines
that would put microchips in our blood that the Beast
could then use to track us. We didn’t need much; we could subsist
on what the larger society—the masses of servants and drones—
discarded in their dumpsters and thrift shops
and donation bins. We would simply take what we desired
from the places that briefly employed us—
bleeding the Beast. We were free
of all bonds but for the shackle of unfettered
freedom. All this liberty was like air.
You need it to live, but too much of it
and you have no firm place to stand; you’ll fall
through it to your breaking.
We had only one law: do what you want but do
no harm. But even that was too much
constraint for some. We called ourselves leaderless
but that’s never how it really works
and the most corrupting species of power
is the one you pretend you don’t possess.
They renamed me ’Munk, short for Chipmunk,
after the stuffed toy I’d clutched when I arrived to them.
My mom had gotten it for me at a state park gift shop
a few months prior. Along with the clothes
I wore it was my only inheritance
from my old life.
They teased me about it
sometimes. “’Munk? More
like ‘monk,’” Dawn and Willow
would crow, whenever I would
decline those pleasures in which
they gleefully indulged—the joint
soaked in something
a fellow drifter cooked up
in a motel room with sticky carpet; the anonymous
hookups with strangers.
My mom rechristened herself Wildflower.
We had no name for ourselves
other than Family.
I’m ready to speak
my true name again.