the devil..

The devil couldn’t reach me, so he sent temptation instead. Not with fire, but with a memory— the kind that sounds like someone I loved and lost and still ache for in the quiet. He knew I wouldn’t kneel for darkness, so he offered me a ghost. A soft voice I thought I’d forgotten, a warmth I swore I’d buried. He held out everything I once prayed for, wrapped in everything I can never have again. And suddenly I wasn’t fighting him— I was fighting myself. Fighting the part of me that still longs for the touch that’s gone, for the future that died, for the person who isn’t coming back. The devil didn’t need claws or flames. He only needed my grief. He only needed the crack in my chest where love used to live. The devil couldn’t reach me, so he sent temptation instead— and it looked so much like hope that I almost followed it back into the dark.