The Devil is a Man Child With a God Shaped Hole / by grace mcgrade

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I was fond of your darkness and perhaps sick for finding beauty in it, because I sought pleasure in the ability to connect the dots and empty parts of you like stars, an Ursa Major of intricacies, of pain and incomplete stories. Unresolution.  A melancholic absence sprawled out like an untouched, unfathomed puzzle. With delicate moments of light, gasps of understanding, clues of knowingness. And then darkness all around, encapsulating- seeking environments that made your insides match your outside, where I stood faint and misplaced, illuminated by dream. Dreams of potential. Dreams of too much knowing.

It exhausting being in knowing. It is even more exhausting trying to forget. I am the inbetween. I have made my home a corridor where I can greet each departing guest. Know too much? Time to forget? I love you. Know too little? Time to remember? I am with with you.


I can say the most, vile grotesque things imaginable when I’m angry.
And women shouldn’t get angry.
They should be soft, and contained and only whisper lovely things.
I am tempestuous and overflow with everything, with rage, with passion, with breath and breasts and love.
I am leaving and I am taking all of my magic with me. I have not shattered and I am not broken.

I want to say that you will never get to touch me again.
I imagine that the rest of your days you will have an unquenchable thirst, a strange tiredness that you cannot fully sleep off. It  drifts you down a reel of memories and words unsaid like libraries collapsing in on themselves. I want to say that every woman after me will be doused in my name. Soaked in my shadow. And you will become dreadfully bored. The thought of your missteps will keep you awake, becoming itch you cannot scratch, and the thing you must have left somewhere. And you, my darling, will be empty.

And I will be full.

I will be your most important pain.

But to say that would be vile and grotesque - and women,

women should never get angry.