I Cannot Say His Name

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One thousand percent of my love I dealt him and laid out proudly across the gambling table. He smiled and made his wager and swore promises to match my deal. The idiot in me was somewhere having fun and was not attuned to the devil's music......she did not know yet that she was going to lose, she had no clue that she would never dance again.

The game was sweet in the beginning, especially when he dealt his "I love you," card. I oozed. So enamored was I that I took no notice that those words were plastered on the Joker card......that bastard! He took my soul almost every night when I let his axe dig out my diamonds, water gushing from the cave where they were hidden........... as he hunted, broke in, plundered and ravished avariciously. He ate me like a famished beggar, and I was convinced I would always be enough to keep him full, a whole meal I was not. I guess I forgot about digestion, huh.... and the fact that he would someday be hungry again, for a different dish of course. 

I continued to play even though my chip stacks were lowering. He convinced me that whatever he collected, he would safeguard and one day recur to me. I waited for that love, but it never arrived to knock upon my heart and make its home. I gave it freely so expected it to come back to me the same. All along I was playing against a thief, a shape shifter, a magician........ who went from loving me to discarding me and the hysterical revelation is that I never discerned it was approaching. Who discards me anyway?

The game ended when I could not see him anymore. Absolutely obscured! The table elongated and he seemed so far from me, a distant, vague shadow. I squealed his name in anguish, begging many nights for him to come closer but the distance drilled a gaping hole, a dingy space where I existed no more.

He coveted all my chips, even my cards too. By the time I stood up from the table, he had dissipated like the wind. The putrid whiff of his departure left my bones to rot and replaced his lovely perfume with the scent of decay. The man, whose name I cannot say left me barren, broken, betrayed and buried under the rubble of love's debt. I will never be able to repay.

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