The Chandelier’s Daughter
A little over two decades ago, three of us sat at the dining table.Claudelle, my wife. Evans-Archyl, our son. And me.
We were naming a girl not yet born.
Claudelle offered names like prayers. I answered with names like plans.
None held. None fit.
Evans sat silent. Pensive. A boy watching light.
Finally we turned to him. Without pause he said: Krystal.
We asked why.
He smiled and pointed at the chandelier above us.
Krystal has many faces to show her beauty, he said.
Each face catches the light differently. Each one is true.
He told us to ponder the brilliance how one Krystal speaks many messages.
And so our daughter was named. Not by us, but through us.
I was the poet at that table,
and still the verses find me:
Light does not argue with glass.
It bends, it bows, it multiplies.
So did you even before you had breath.
Today, that name crossed a stage at Molloy University.
Krystal.
A mother hears it and the room folds. The years collapse.
The first kick. The first word. The first fever at 2 a.m.
All the nights she whispered strength into a sleeping child.
To hear Krystal called as a graduate is to hear every lullaby answered.
It is pride with wet eyes. It is a heart that swells and breaks at once.
And I, the poet-father, write this in the quiet:
Your name was prophecy.
Your life, the poem.
Every facet you turn
is a stanza the world must read.
A father stands quieter. Love, for him, is a long witness.
He remembers the boy who named her. He remembers the chandelier.
He sees the many faces now student, daughter, woman, promise ,
and rejoices without sound, because some joys exceed the weight of words.
He only thinks: Go. Show them your light. Do not dim yourself to fit a room.
Give your best to the work, and let the work give back.
Krystal, you begin the road that waits.
There will be hurdles. Let your many faces meet them.
One for grit. One for grace. One for the quiet refusal to be small.
You were named for brilliance that shifts but never breaks.
Last verse, for the road ahead:
Walk into rooms the way a chandelier enters.
Not loud. Luminous.
Let them adjust to your light.
From the table where you began,
to the stage where you stand,
to the life you will build —
we are here.
We chose your name.
You chose to become it.
With all our love,
Mom, Dad, and Evans-Archyl
Pierre-Richard Raymond
