Author S. K. Nicholas

Human suffering. I want them to do to you what they did to me. I want to see the tears in your eyes as you realise this isn’t a dream. Drunk and frozen to my brittle bones, the shape of your breasts reminds me of the safety of my childhood. Eyelashes and nudity. Discarded promises. Boredom as you sniff glue while bombs obliterate all you once held dear. It’s in every word left unuttered as those you grew up with are buried one by one. Leaves falling, visions succumbed. Replace the truth with sex then scratch your arms with glass. I want a lover that’s not as narcissistic as I am. I want a friend that doesn’t desert me even when the words do. Let me close my eyes and drift; let me evaporate and leave this place behind. It never meant much to me anyway. I remember bits and pieces. Fragments of conversation. Snatches of your favourite perfume. There’s heaven in the bottle and the way you undress before the window. Sometimes it makes things better. Sometimes there’s nothing that can be done other than to walk the streets in search of what will never be found. Whatever. Things won’t change until I can spread my wings and fly far away. Intent. Focus. No vocations. No past. Only you and me in the flames of the fire, forever burning in the moment. Further down the block, they surround this guy and strip him naked. Pinning him to the ground, they break his fingers with a slab of concrete, only it’s not enough, so they pour gasoline over him and light a match. As he goes up in flames, I remember my favourite handjob of yours. Such control in a slender, quick wrist. Bedridden with the flu, I had a vision of driving somewhere by the South Coast. It was summer, maybe spring, and you were walking the sidewalk wearing an ocean-blue dress with flowers on it. You didn’t notice me as I pulled alongside you, and even though I wanted to get out and talk, something stopped me. The same something that stops me now. The silence of illness, and the mysteries of cheating hearts as yesterday keeps on breathing.