Skye

By the time I hear my name, it isn’t quite mine anymore. Traveling faster than I do, passed between mouths like something small, something sharp. I don’t hear the sentence. Just the ending. A look. The tilt of a head that means oh, her?

I pretend not to notice. I get good at pretending. I learn how to keep my face neutral, how to walk like nothing touches me. But everything does. Everything leaves fingerprints.

They say I move on fast. They don’t see how long I stay in my head after someone leaves. They don’t see the way I replay moments, searching for the second I became disposable to them.

There’s a version of me. Laughing louder than necessary, posting like she’s unbothered, a version that lets attention land wherever it wants. People think that version is the real one. She’s easier to understand, she doesn’t ask for much, she doesn’t ask to stay.

Inside, I’m counting. How many messages until silence. How many days until I’m replaced. How many times I can tell myself this doesn’t matter before my body flinches anyway.

I memorize patterns. Who gets bored fastest. Who disappears without warning. Who stays just long enough to make me think this time might be different. I learn not to hope too loudly. Hope has a way of embarrassing me.

They think I’m careless with people. They don’t see how careful I am with myself. My feelings, my folded desire. I don’t fall in love. I fall into attention and call it gravity, because gravity sounds less desperate than need.

Sometimes I look at my reflection and try to see what they see. The girl who doesn’t mind being temporary. The girl who’s easy to leave.

I wonder if this is my fault. If I taught them how to treat me by never asking for more. By being grateful for crumbs and calling it a meal. By mistaking being wanted for being known.

When the noise inside me gets too loud, I look for something solid. Something that doesn’t lie or disappear or change its mind overnight. Pain is honest like that. It doesn’t pretend. It doesn’t gossip. It stays where you put it.

After, there’s a quiet. Not peace. Just space. Enough room to breathe without bargaining. Enough silence to convince myself I’m still in control.

I clean myself up, cover what needs covering. I practice looking normal, because normal is easier to forgive.

The next day, someone says my name like they already know the rest of the story. I smile like I agree with them.

And that’s how it starts. Not with a choice. Not with a moment anyone would notice. But with the slow understanding that my name no longer belongs to me. It belongs to the stories told when I’m not in the room. To the mouths that shape it into something smaller, easier to pass around. It belongs to assumptions, to summaries, to the version of me that doesn’t get to speak back.

I start introducing myself less, I let people decide who I am before I can correct them. There’s a strange relief in that, being known without being understood. It saves me the effort of explaining how much this all hurts.

I learn what my name means now. It means temporary. Replaceable. It means whatever they need it to mean so they don’t have to stay.

Sometimes I try to remember when it felt like mine. When it sounded soft. When it didn’t come with a warning attached. I can’t find that version anymore, maybe she left quietly. Maybe she got tired of being mispronounced.

I carry the new meaning anyway. I let it settle into my posture, into my silence, the way I lower my expectations before anyone else can. If my name is already ruined, I tell myself, then there’s nothing left to protect.

And that scares me. Not enough to stop. Just enough to notice.

And so I keep moving, letting my name go wherever it wants, hoping one day, it might come back to me changed. Or maybe not come back at all.

Later, I stand in the bathroom and watch my reflection practice being fine. The light is too bright. It makes everything honest. I tilt my head the way I’ve learned to, the way that looks effortless instead of tired. I try on different expressions like excuses, none of them feeling convincing for long.

Someone laughs outside. Not at me. At least, I don’t think so. It’s impossible to tell anymore. I hold my breath anyway, waiting for my name to surface, waiting for that familiar tightening in my chest that means it’s happening again.

I check my phone without thinking. Nothing new. That’s almost worse. Silence feels like confirmation, like proof that whatever people say travels farther than I do. I wonder how many versions of me are circulating right now, how many people feel like they know me without ever having asked.

I tell myself this is temporary. That things will settle. That I’ll grow out of this phase, this reputation, this hunger. But even as I think it, something in me disagrees. Some quiet, knowing part of me understands that once a name changes shape, it rarely goes back.

I turn off the light before I leave. I don’t want to see myself anymore tonight.