I'm Nate Marshall and this is The Slowdown.

I come from a nickname people.

There are people I've known virtually my entire life who I could not look up by their legal

name.

Some of those people are related to me and some are so close they may as well be.

Growing up, sometimes this would cause little moments of trouble.

I might have asked to go over to a neighborhood friend's house but not know their last name

or any of the necessary particulars.

You might have gotten your bike ridden away by a bigger kid and when asked his name you didn't

realize until that moment that whatever you called him was obviously an absurd invention

of youthful self creation.

Even my own name though common is a nickname of sorts.

My given name is Nathaniel, pronounced by my mother as Nathaniel.

Nate is one of those names that got applied to me in the casual moments of adolescence

and stuck so thoroughly it became the name under which I publish and often introduce myself.

Still, most of my family and my oldest or closest friends call me Nathaniel and I admit

I like it.

Nate is who you all know Nathaniel is maybe someone more insular.

Today's poem takes that alchemy of renaming and considers it from multiple moments of

vulnerability.

No name in the street but Ariel Marie.

They called him money and he had none.

...