In a name

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.