I always look up at my name blinking as if confronted by a blinding light - can I believe that those weak sounds - mushy, fake - somehow epitomise being? How can I have that transgendered name - Andre Borges - neither this nor that. . .  and even that is a lie that milk-washed nothing of a name. 

I am nothing and I believe it firmly. 

I know full well the woe of the Anglo, 700 ad before those well wrought Roman walls. Who built this? Where did they go? When did Wierd destroy everything and wherefore did Wierd come from? Who am I?

and I am the product of 800ad. Post empire, pre Christian, a nothing bathed in the sea of desolation a sea of fungal decay. I am the tattered naked savages clinging to the relics of Rome and a barbaric Latin. 

Have you ever hunted wild game in what once was a city? Then you have been inside my mind. Then you have seen the relics of ages submerged in the loam crusts of forgetfulness. . . One history surpassed by another and thus has been my life. 

I am a survivor of apocalypses, personal and otherwise. I look into my nuclear name wondering what those strange inventions mean - for even they are not the beginning - and wonder why. 

And there is no answer, and bravery is no shield against the gusting ice of the void.