I named the devil in my heart at the age of 21, when the world decided to hand another one of my friends a gun to play with. They go bang, if you didn't know that already. I named that devil grief, although I suppose a more apt name would have been to call him bitter. I've been a marionette for that devil since I was eight years old, when he was just a stranger and didn't need a name. Now I linger on puppet strings, my tears an accent to the organ songs played at every funeral. He comes around so often that most people would say we're close enough to call each other friends. Maybe it'd be easier if the only game being played was age, then at least I'd only be rolling the dice against time and expectation. But this devil plays with knives, stabbing through the back, striking through the heart. He plays with ropes and guns and the lungs of little girls. He plays with memories and mistakes, with heartbreak and heart attacks. He plays with age too, he takes too soon. He turns my grief to anger, to bitterness, to spite. He turns it into two fingers raised high to the sky, slowly stripping away my ability to cry. I named him grief as a reminder. I named him grief to remind myself of what sits at the impetus of all of my actions. I named him grief to give less weight to the bitterness and the hate that festers inside. He may sit inside my heart, and he might puppet half my moves. But I have named my devil grief and I've been told that names have power.

His hands used to sit at the curve of my waist

Pulling me closer

lingering near the edge of my spine

and in the good moments it was sweet

and in the others it was a cage

when his touch felt like possession

and I stopped knowing who I was

it is a different kind of death to lose yourself

when the memory of his touch is imprinted on your skin

a type of wound that will never bleed

but still tugs at your heartstrings

I twist and turn

stretching for a desire that I don’t know how to verbalize

I crack my spine

and leave crescent moon indents in the skin alongside my ribs

my arms hug my body

with no straightjacket to keep them there

because freedom is an unfamiliar taste when you’ve been fed routine

and it stings the tongue in the same way that spice does

it leaves you wanting more

but the escape is mine

and I will claim that pain infinitely

I shattered into kaleidoscopic fractals

and maybe I came back wrong

replacing every part of me

losing my identity

counting slow exhales into cold winter air

I think I was trying to prove that I was still there

I felt like the ship of Theseus

Asking the question on if every part of me has changed, could I still be the same?

I’m stuck in a daze

Am I wasting my days?

burn my tongue on coffee for adrenaline

spend an hour in the shower to see if the hot water might wash my brain

the city doesn’t sleep and neither do I

I learn the moon is prettier when the time is after three

I’m chasing a pattern that I don’t understand

And the world keeps turning me

twisting me into something new

I came back kaleidoscopic

changing and chasing

beautiful

shattered

fractures

I meet you at the table

We play our cards as they’re dealt

I call your bluff

You don’t call mine

You leave me at the table

Leave your cards on the table

Leave your heart on the table

I keep mine

Flush away my emotions in pursuit of the game

You leave straight away

We meet again at another table

Years down the line

The eye contact Deja vu from another time

but we’re playing a new game

Given new cards

Given a chance for a different call

I meet you at the table

I gave you everything.

or at least what my childhood self thought everything was

I let myself play pretend with the memory

as if I hadn’t given you the best of me

you slipped yourself out of my life easier than you had slipped in

and it’s not like you owed me a damn thing

but I thought the time spent meant you would at least say goodbye

But you were playing games.

and when you passed GO, you collected your $200 and left me behind

losing a game I didn’t know I was playing

and I’m left paying rent on the space you take up in my mind

wondering why I care less about you and more about the way you left

and I think back to the last time that I saw you.

when I left a can open on the table

jenga blocks spilling on the floor

I let you spin my head round

half a drink in, losing the game and my judgment

only it wasn’t really lost

I chose to leave it behind

and I wonder if it’s still sitting there

the way my last text is still sitting on your phone

wondering when all these games really end

then, a pedestal

when, higher expectations

now, it just exists

before, I thought more

during, it could have been us

after, only me

I run through life and deadlines

I squeeze every inch of time out of my calendar

Please stop telling me to slow down

I want you to run with me

Chase me on this journey we call life

I’m willing to make everything happen

I’ll lose sleep and my body to make time for living my life

living our life

I don’t need you to go my speed

I just need you to keep following

to intersect our orbits

I’m never going to stop running in circles

but I’ll treat our collision points with passion

I’ll steer myself to run along the path you walk

I’ll love you

but I will live first.

The faint sounds of a piano trailed down the hallway from the ballroom. Anthony was sure his sister had locked herself in again, drowning her crises out with music. The ballroom was her sanctuary, the echoes of open space the closest Elise could get to escaping the castle walls.

A resounding crash interrupted his musings and the music that had been playing only moments prior.

Peering into the ballroom, a thousand crystal shards lay shattered across the floor. Above them, the dull metal chain of the chandelier was still, almost eerie in its lonesome, hanging unadorned from the ceiling.

Anthony took a step forward.

"Elise?" He called. The room was silent. He sidestepped each of the crystal shards, fragments of his reflection mirrored in every one.

"Elise?" Worry etched itself into his tone. The piano in the corner lay uncovered, adorned with sheet music. Anthony watched the papers rustle in the breeze, pausing. All seven of the glass windows were open, wind pushing the curtains to and fro, sending whispers across the floor, and a shiver down his spine.

What was happening?

Elise was missing, the wind was blowing, and somehow the chain from the fallen chandelier remained still. Unmoved.