a (love) letter to the devil

Dear devil,

Only two days into this month and you are front and center in my brain, warning lights sounding the alarm.  Last January, when I drew you as my August tarot card, I had no idea how you would show up.  Now, here you are on my table pre-dawn, a horned demon surrounded by a ring of candle fire:  part man and part zebra, a serpent climbing your chest.

Though this is my 426th love letter, and by now I know how the process works, I cannot love you yet.  I cannot welcome you in so that I can let you go.  I’d rather you leave, burned back into your underworld, while I dance in the moonlight as if you didn’t exist.  I would prefer to go on as if the dark side of me – the fear, the hiding, the slipping through the cracks – could stay unnoticed while my veneer of light and goodness remained intact. 

I watch the candlelight flicker across your sinister figure.  Last night I dreamed of fire, of flames consuming my home.  What if I allowed the dark side of me to burn like that?  Burn right down to the ground?  What if I said to you, “Bring it on, devil, let me see it all?  Let the flames illuminate what lives in the shadows.”  Would whatever came out into the light be transformed?  Would the exposed wounds be cauterized by flame and heal into clean, slick scars?  If it all burned to the ground, would something arise from the ashes? 

As sun rises through the oaks, the candle flames no longer illuminate your stripes. Maybe the best I can do, devil, is thank you for the invitation to burn it all down.  Perhaps I can ask you to sit next to me, to walk with me, to show me the uncomfortable parts and places. For now, this is the closest I can get to love.