Hi.

Of flame and metal shaped to cradle, a creature this game hops over the fence. This game brushes sleep from your eyes. There is morning in the good. This game leads you along to a place you both know to get to. But you don’t. Unless it’s thunder. Or unusually hot. Or some other distraction, you don’t. Come here.

This game does not ask you for your hand. The way you approach this game is animal. Since you and this game’s words first met, it’s poured. In all your spirit, sit.

When I play this game, I default bad-side. The words precipice agnostic, soar or fall, I don’t the former. Stories of forced marriages and disapproval, generations of disownment and addiction, one world on another every decade, decisions made given, an inherited grief into mine and me.

Splat.

When I play this game, I am 14 weeks past losing my dad. I am 1 week til I lose my grandmother. My mother, the land, a wreck. Her sibling, a mountain up and sky like that, just can’t. And no one of old age. I find their jewelry finding me, my finger a childhood friendship ring, a friend who I don’t know of who I love who I find gives also The Lady Is Not For Burning one year later, my wrist a late-stage pain relief ॐ etched on genuine leather, my neck a microlake pebble geode torn in two repaired apology with gold, my industrial wearing wrong a hoop appearing at the casting in the easiled photo decades prior worn correctly. With what they carried, believing in their value, weighing me down.

But when I play this game again, I will choose good-side. I will gather little lets, tiny loves. I will preen them quietly. Here is hoping. Next fly-down in time, I’ll open wings. This game is hard. Maybe land gracefully.