obliteratio

There is a story about a nail
and a door and a man
who meant only to start a conversation —
the way you mean only to say
I love you
and end up changing everything.

The nail is probably a legend.
but what we remember is the document,
95 arguments against the price of grace,
against the coin in the coffer
and the promise that follows —
as soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
the soul from purgatory springs —

as if freedom were a thing
you could collect at a window,
show your papers,
prove you are who you say you are.

In 1934, a Black minister from Georgia
sails into Berlin
the year after the door on democracy
swings shut —
and finds, in the rubble of an old argument,
a name worth borrowing.
Crosses out Michael.
Writes Martin Luther
in the margin of himself,
hands it to his five-year-old son
like a coat the boy will grow into…
or won’t:
The relatives kept calling him Mike.

The birth certificate disagreed
for twenty-three years
before he crossed it out himself,
claimed the name
like a country
you have to earn citizenship
even though you were born into it.

I have been handed things I didn’t choose.
A flag. A document.
a definition of what love is allowed to look like,
who gets to be legible
to the state,
whose name the coffer rings for.
Someone is always selling grace.
Someone is always at the window
deciding which birth certificates
are real,
which names are valid,
which souls spring free
and which stay in the waiting room
with their number
and their proof of who they are, quibbling over details.

Luther didn’t mean to break the church.
King didn’t mean to become the name.
His father didn’t mean to start anything
when he crossed out Michael
in a city that was already
crossing out names
by the millions.

What I mean when I say
I believe in freedom
is that I believe in the irrefutable fact
of wanting —
the way a man might sail an ocean
to find a name that fits,
the way two people find each other
across whatever line
someone else drew on a map,
the way love precedes
every document that tries to contain it,

somewhere a man
is crossing out his name
and writing something truer
in the margin —
and that
is what got nailed to the door.