Inspired by Zebadri : The Games We Play Together

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The rain came down like loose piano keys falling out of the sky. We were sitting under a broken carnival awning beside the river, where the lights buzzed like tired insects and the ferryman slept with one eye open.

You dealt the cards.

I rolled the dice.

The moon watched us through a cracked bottle.

We played all the old games together. Hide-and-seek with memories. Poker with promises. Chess with bad intentions. Sometimes we’d trade dreams the way dockworkers trade cigarettes at midnight. Sometimes we’d wager entire years on a single turn of a card.

You always cheated a little.

So did I.

That’s why the games lasted so long.

The city around us was built from forgotten songs. Streetcars rattled through puddles full of stars. A monkey in a threadbare coat collected lost keys. A blue bird the size of a suitcase sat on a rooftop judging everyone equally.

Nobody won much.

Nobody lost much.

The scorekeeper had vanished years ago.

One night we played a game where every move changed the weather. Hearts brought fog. Diamonds made the church bells ring. Clubs filled the gutters with autumn leaves. Spades opened little doorways in the dark where old ghosts stood smoking and discussing philosophy.

The rules changed every hour.

We kept playing anyway.

By dawn the sky looked like a worn-out circus tent. The city folded itself into a pocket watch and disappeared. The river turned into a railroad track stretching toward a place neither of us could name.

You laughed.

I laughed.

The train never came.

That was part of the game.

Years later, when the streets had forgotten our footsteps and the jukeboxes had swallowed their last nickels, I found one of our old game pieces in the bottom of my coat pocket. It was scratched and tarnished and almost worthless.

Almost.

I held it up to the light and heard distant music—accordion, trumpet, a piano missing half its notes.

And for a moment I saw the whole thing again:

The rain.
The cards.
The river.
The impossible city.

The games we play together never really end.

They just move to another table.

Somewhere beneath the world, in a room lit by broken chandeliers and moonlight trapped in jars, the dealer is still shuffling the deck. The dice are still rolling. The ferryman is still waiting.

And there’s an empty chair across from me.

Your chair.

The next hand is about to begin.