I sat with a man long enough, and I didn’t know his name. We were together always, and together never.

He came to me when I called, and he came when I did not. Cloaked in black with a sash of red like blood distilled, a red that could not be described.

He had fire in his eyes and always wore an expression that terrified me.

We sat in silence while the steam rose from his body, and his answers to all questions were grunts and grunts alone.

“What is your name?” I asked him and he said “I am an emotion”. I thought to myself then you must be Anger.

Months passed that bled into years and with me he stayed. Never once telling me what emotion he was.

Every time he flared or got agitated, I felt the white hot rage and anger in me simmer.

And so anger he was. Anger personified, living with me, living in me.

“You are Anger and Rage” I said to him. He looked up at me and said, “no and yes. I am anger, or at least that is what many people call me by and confuse me for.”

In the comfortable silence of our shared rage we stayed. “Who really are you” I asked?.

When I sat with Anger long enough, he told me his real name was Grief.