109 Shape Of My Heart

Baby, please try to forgive me
Stay here don’t put out the glow
Hold me now don’t bother
If every minute it makes me weaker
You can save me from the man that I’ve become, oh yeah

Looking back on the things I’ve done
I was trying to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart

Sadness is beautiful, loneliness that’s tragical
So help me I can’t win this war, oh no
Touch me now, don’t bother
If every second it makes me weaker
You can save me from the man I’ve become

Looking back on the things I’ve done
I was trying to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart

I’m here with my confession
Got nothing to hide no more
I don’t know where to start
But to show you the shape of my heart

I’m lookin’ back on things I’ve done
I never wanna play the same old part
I’ll keep you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart
Looking back on the things I’ve done
I was trying to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart
Looking back on the things I’ve done
I was trying to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of

Show you the shape of my heart

Phoenix Wright
The Borscht Bowl Club
January 1, 2026, 7:30 PM

Running a hand abashedly over his chin, Phoenix winced inwardly at the protruding bristles scraping over his fingertips. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shaved – sometime last year, probably. He smiled grimly at his self-directed attempt at drollness.

He’d figured that his appearance wouldn’t matter much that evening, as he’d thought it would be a dead night at the bar. His rationale had been that everyone would still be so hungover from the previous night’s New Year’s Eve festivities, they simply wouldn’t have enough energy to leave the house the next day and add more hair of the dog to their systems.

Turned out, he was wrong. Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

The joint was ass-to-elbow jam-packed. He couldn’t even see the back wall of the room among the sea of laughing, cheering heads. It was just as well. If he couldn’t see spaces, he wouldn’t be focusing on faces. This meant Phoenix could just lose himself in this particular piece he’d long been perfecting, rather than reflecting that a fresh year had been rung in, and yet absolutely nothing was new or improved in the desolate, abysmal, hollow shell that was otherwise known as his general existence.

The bond he had shared with Maya had been like a bridge out of his fortressed mind, it allowed him to set foot outside its protective compound and explore the sun-warmed grass on the other side. Now she had gone, and the bridge had been severed. Now, no matter how many people surrounded him, even in a crowded bar of cheery, drunken regulars – some with questionable music tastes who were fans of his and enjoyed his mediocre pianist performances – he still felt inconsolably desolate, empty, and alone.

Love, often regarded as a beacon of hope, can sometimes mask deeper underlying concerns. It is a paradoxical enigma that leads to profound loneliness, leaving one’s life in shambles and the heart shattered into countless fragments. Each broken piece aches for her just as intensely as the heart once did as a whole. The obsession persists, an unyielding yearning for her face, her eyes, her smile, her scent, all the while knowing that she is forever beyond reach. Life becomes a fragile existence, enslaved by thoughts of her. You strive for normalcy, yet it remains elusive. Every aspect of existence loses its meaning, initially adorned with ecstasy and wonder, only to be stripped away, leaving behind nothing but anguish and an overwhelming void.

The hobo had never felt more bleak or lonesome in his entire life. If his old friends had all simply been physically far away, like Edgeworth (whom he hadn’t heard a peep from in nearly a year now) he could have overcome it with technology. However, since the breakup, and his consequential emotional distance, he’d sensed it was now too late to go back to them – to have to deal with his angry, antagonistic, forsaken point of view on life. That was why he’d opted not to go to Gumshoe’s party last night and had just gone home to wallow after work. He couldn’t face seeing them after having pushed them away for so long. No doubt they also blamed him for the deterioration of the relationship with Maya, and now, the chasm between them was simply too devastating to be bridged. It yawned ever wider with each passing day until he knew finally, there was no going back and he would be an outcast for the rest of his days.

Phoenix gave his head a firm shake. He refused to let himself continue down this downward-spiraling train of thought. He would not allow himself to wallow in self-pity, even though for the most part, his world was full of shadows and gloom.

After all, he still had his darling Trucy, who still managed to light up his otherwise dark world, and who was the sole reason that the ever-present glass bottle resting atop the piano bench was nothing stronger than grape juice. He’d learned on Christmas Eve that very bad things tended to happen when he drank anything stronger.

The pianist uncapped the bottle resting at his side (Tyler seemed to have had pity on his sorry ass since his moving Bon Jovi performance and was back to slipping him freebies), and took a long swing from it, hoping to drown his sorrows into its sweet taste.

His daughter was the motivation for him not having gone over the edge, into the alcohol-soaked dark side of the abyss, never to return. Hell, the magician was the sole reason he hadn’t gone and offed himself after his final breakup with the love of his life.

Maya Fey. His first source of light.

He recalled the sorrow of their first meeting, both of them mutually shattered at the shock and grief of finding Mia’s body. In one of the worst moments of his life, as he’d gazed into those pained, red, tear-rimmed eyes staring back at him, instinctively, even then, he’d somehow known that the inconsolable, grieving devastation on her visage, despite still being a stranger to him, matched exactly not only what was on his face, but also within his heart. From the darkness of losing Mia…he’d forged this incomparable, impenetrable bond with Maya Fey, connecting them in some otherworldly way, right from the very start. There was so much more to Maya than Phoenix Wright ever knew – he had been determined to discover every single part of the real person hidden at the bottom of her soul. It was the dawn of the person he had been; the person he’d thought was destined to be. She had made him realize what true love, selflessness, and sacrifice truly were.

She made me want to be a better man.

Then along had come his daughter when he’d been at his darkest hour, adding her wonderful beacon of light to his life.

How lucky he’d been to have not only the loving Trucy but Maya right there too,  enduring his personal hell right with him, all the while dealing with her own. Together, they had braved the odds and side by side, they both had survived, even if their hearts bore scars that would never fade. In the end, he realized that with her beside him, nothing could ever go wrong. With Maya having his back, and vice versa, they could face anything.

In hindsight, he could see how despite the loss of his badge, how blessed he’d been to have had two great loves of his life to aid and see him through, even though fate hadn’t allowed them to come and shine together.

Not even a burning bridge stopped him from trying to save her, rescue her, try to bring her back to safety. He had almost died that day, but he had done it for her, and he would never regret it. Even back then, he’d known he would have done anything to keep her safe because she’d meant that much to him. He would have done anything to keep her alive, to keep her by his side, and maintain that otherworldly, unbreakable connection they’d forged. That connection which had since brightened up his whole world, like a warm, comforting light he’d always carried him through his life and given him continued strength in all adversity.

Against all odds, Maya Fey had remained by his side. He’d thought nothing could ever take her away from him.

Unfortunately, cruel destiny had decided once more to prove him wrong and send something against them that would finally be their undoing.

And now his erstwhile soul mate was engaged to be married to another man. One who wasn’t him. 

If someone punches you in the stomach, it’ll hurt whether you were expecting it or not. So, if the person you love stops loving you back, you’re going to feel the blow even if you saw it coming.

When Phoenix had presented that diary page to the court, he hadn’t realized that it would decide his future and change his life forever; hadn’t known that it was going to cost him the most important person in his life.

He never could have fathomed that after all they had endured together, a mere little piece of paper would cruelly snatch her from his arms and that a pitiful excuse for a man – an evil, diabolical, madman, would be what severed the unbreakable tie and put the final nail in the coffin, sealing his fate.

Kristoph Gavin.

The name would forever burn like an eternal curse in his ears.

Because of that monster, where there had once been dual pinnacles of brightness in his life, now Phoenix only had one.

His Trucy. His sole remaining source of light, which somehow, still shined on brightly through the haze, like a lighthouse in the distant skyline.

He’d given his daughter the night off from sidekick poker shark duty. Nobody would be in the right frame of mind to be playing poker that night. At 15, Trucy was old enough to stay home by herself but had remained at Gumshoe and Maggey’s since the night before, along with his ex’s cousin and her boyfriend. Although Pearl’s visits to the city to see his daughter had dwindled to near non-existence since he and Maya’s breakup last spring, he was glad that the two teens were still in touch. Phoenix was grateful that the demise of his own relationship hadn’t affected that of his daughter, and the young girl he would always love as much as his own. However, on the rare instances that he knew Pearl might have been dropping by to see Trucy, either for a visit or en route to visit the Gumshoes, he’d found himself making excuses to quickly make himself scarce, lest he became victim to a sharp slap or pointed choice of words for breaking her cousin’s heart.

Phoenix’s current state of mind possibly wasn’t in peak form for piano playing, but he figured having played the song infinite times, he could reproduce it by habitual automatic memory.

It’s the routine procedure, he reminded himself, feeling the cold air from the underground room beginning to hit the bare skin on his face and hands like shards of ice. It’s for the paycheck; it’s for Trucy.

Seven years ago, in another lifetime, a young defense attorney, desperate to declare his affections to the woman he loved, had made a last-ditch, courageous effort to prove his ardor with a certain song. He’d impulsively overthrown Willie Effastop, the unsuspecting pianist in a bar, and taken over the ivories to play a song of his own creation, to the tune of “Grenade” by Bruno Mars, and sung about how he would break every law for her. That final attempted hurrah had been the only way to convince her how much she’d meant to him. At the time, the customers at the tavern had applauded and hailed him for the romantic gesture of his supposed wondrous singing.

None of the cheering crowd that night could have ever foreseen, in a million years, that not even a month later, that acclaimed performer would one day be forced to show off his lackluster piano skills, in that same bar,  yet again. Except for this time, it was for the sake of profit instead of play. And not as a passionate performer, but as a disgraced former defense attorney. A pathetic, nearly unrecognizable has-been.

There had only been one point in his life when the piano publicly hadn’t been a despised task that represented all that he’d had and lost, and that had been the one time he’d played it for Maya.

He wished like hell she could be there now, but he knew that was an impossible dream. If the fiendish German were to know about Maya having any kind of contact with him, she would have been in danger, he couldn’t have ever risked that. As a result, he’d had no choice but to make the gut-wrenching decision to forcibly eject her from his life forever.

A plague on both your houses, Kristoph Gavin!

How easily he could still visualize her, as though she were there.  He could picture her standing before him, looking into his eyes, lifting her hand to his face, soft, cool fingertips tracing up the shape of his lips, up the length of his nose, and to his eyelids. Then her fingers brushed his cheek and cradled it with her palm.

Nick, he heard her say.

Her touch . . . it felt so real. It was almost as if he could physically feel her skin against his. It was just like the previous night, in his room, where he could have sworn that she was there.

Nick, Nick, Nick . . . I’ve missed you so much.  

The sound of her voice rang true to his ears. 

It’s so real, he thought in wonder, staring at her beautiful face.

Tentatively, he reached up to touch her cheeks. His rough fingers caressed her face, treating her like a delicate, porcelain doll. Soon, chapped lips replaced rough fingers and his hands ran up her spine, caressing her with tantalizing slowness. He smirked when he felt her delighted shiver and her hands roaming up his back to his biceps, gripping tightly.

Nick, he heard her murmur.

“Maya,” he whispered back to his hallucination, his lips brushing her forehead.

Phoenix moved his hands down to her waist, pulling her close to him, her chest pressed tightly against his own. He loved the feeling of her heart beating against his.

“Nick.” Her voice broke as she grabbed his hoodie tighter and buried her face in the crook of his neck.

She stretched up on her toes, her lips brushing his ear, making him shudder.

I love you, he heard her say in his mind, her voice echoing softly into his head.  It still sounded so clear to him, as if she were really there. I loved you then, I love you still. Always have. Always will.

“Maya,” he whispered softly, savoring the feel of her name on his tongue. How he missed that as well. His mind was where she continued to haunt him, where she made her pleasurable jaunts. Where he could still tell her, over and over again, how much he still loved her. How he never had, nor ever would stop, until the day he drew his last breath.

I often reminisce about the time when the shared breath between us felt like a cherished gift solely meant for me. But now, it has transformed into a stagnant mist, devoid of its former freshness. You thrived in life with a youthful heart, and there was no need for any alteration. You had understood your heart long before I could comprehend my own. From the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew my life would blur into a haze. The days of unhappiness would cease to exist, as you became my guiding light, my love, my source of laughter, and the essence of my existence. Oh, how I yearn for the touch of your lips, the fragrance of your vanilla-sweet scent, the playful melody of your laughter, and the soft whispers of affection in my ear. If only you could truly grasp the depths of my brokenness in your absence.

Christ, how he missed his Maya.

Maya. Maya. Maya. Her name ran through his thoughts, as unforgettable to him as she was. He saw her in his mind’s eye, giggling, whispering his name, and beckoning him to reach her.

However, he never, ever could. It was only a figment of his imagination.

Because she’s promised to belong to another man now. Here’s the inescapable truth – she’s moved on, so I had to tell everyone that I was over it, as well. But it ended up being the worst decision I ever made because then I couldn’t even get to talk about missing her. About how when I coerced her to leave me, she took away the very heart of me.

Phoenix fervently hoped nobody would challenge him at cards tonight. Trucy’s absence notwithstanding, in his current melancholy state, he knew he would undoubtedly lose, which would result in bidding sayonara to his perfect undefeated winning poker streak, and consequently, saying hello unemployment line!

Wouldn’t that just be the ultimate kick you in the crotch, and spit on your neck fantastic way to kick off the New Year!

After seven years, the tune to “I Would Break Every Law for You,” otherwise known as “Grenade” was forever seared into his skull, but he only played the piano cover of the song, and he rarely sang along to it. However, sometimes, if he was in decent spirits, and a few consumer bucks accompanied the request for the song, Phoenix would concede and sing the Bruno Mars version. Nevertheless, never, ever again did he sing his personalized lyrics, despite the repeated cajoling requests and the tempting dollars waved at him.

Gritting his teeth, Phoenix began to play the familiar song, but somehow still managed to screw up the first few opening bars. He bit back the stream of curses threatening to erupt.

He blamed nobody but himself. The holidays always left him gloomier than usual, because they reminded him of her. Consequently, his entire game was off, and he couldn’t even get it together enough to play the tune of the very song he’d started his piano ‘career’ with! And sing? The one thing which normally distracted the crowd from his second-rate piano playing? Tonight? Forget it!

Phoenix’s shaky fingers made yet another sharp, off-key blunder, and this time, the messing up of the notes resulted in some of the cruelly unforgiving drunken patrons jeering at him.

The hell with it all, he thought angrily, burying the heels of his hands in his eyes.

In resigned desperation, Phoenix pounded out another song. He hadn’t practiced this one as much, and he winced as his fingers hit a beginning off-key note, which he hoped nobody had noticed. In his tormented condition, he wouldn’t be able to withstand another chorus of boos.

Some things were set in stone, whether you liked it or not, and the fact withstood that Phoenix Wright was a better poker player than he was a singer, and a better singer than a piano player, even though there were some nights when he didn’t have to resort to singing to obscure his lack of pianist skills.

Unfortunately, this was not one of them. He had no choice. He had to sing.

The accompanying lyrics were disturbingly revealing, but he knew Kristoph was away in Germany for the holidays until the next day.

He deals the cards as a meditation  
And those he plays never suspect 
He doesn’t play for the money he wins 
He don’t play for respect

He deals the cards to find the answer  
The sacred geometry of chance 
The hidden law of a probable outcome 
The numbers lead a dance

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier  
I know that the clubs are weapons of war 
I know that diamonds mean money for this art 
But that’s not the shape of my heart

He may play the Jack of diamonds  
He may lay the Queen of spades 
He may conceal a King in his hand 
While the memory of it fades

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier  
I know that the clubs are weapons of war 
I know that diamonds mean money for this art 
But that’s not the shape of my heart 
That’s not the shape, the shape of my heart

And if I told you that I loved you  
You’d maybe think there’s something wrong 
I’m not a man of too many faces 
The mask I wear is one

But those who speak know nothing  
And find out to their cost 
Like those who curse their luck in too many places 
And those who fear a loss

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that’s not the shape of my heart
That’s not the shape of my heart
That’s not the shape, the shape of my heart

The DILF ruefully acknowledged that he possibly wasn’t as incompetent at the piano as he liked to think he was; it was more of the fact that he had no aspiration to be a piano player and didn’t want to risk internally assuming its identity. It was transience, a means to an end. The true Phoenix Wright’s fulfillment lay elsewhere, over the horizon. So tantalizingly within sight yet so far, and still out of reach…

When the song was over, the bar burst into a smattering of applause and cheers. He smiled faintly but did not revel in the crowd’s admiration. He hadn’t been able to do so in seven years.

No matter how much I think, no matter how much I try, I can’t fill this void in my heart.  

“I love you, Maya,” he whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears as it got lost amongst the throng of shouts and cheers. “Happy New Year.”

He tugged his blue beanie down so that it shadowed his eyes, before closing them against the burning sensation behind his eyelids, unaware that across the room in the far corner, unnoticed and unseen, somebody else was doing the exact same thing.

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