Author S. K. Nicholas

The cat’s name is Honey, and as she takes a piece of cheese from my hand, a homeless guy stood in the park across the road is stabbed in the juggler. Although he’s not really homeless, just like the cat isn’t a stray. It’s all superfluous anyhow, and as blood pisses from his neck and he collapses into a pile of trash cans, all the beds I’ve ever slept in spontaneously ignite into flames and all my ex-lovers gasp mid-sentence for no apparent reason. Deep within their mouths, they taste clementines and Joop aftershave. Deep within mine, there are loose strands of hair and fragments of letters declaring several states of oneness with a man who was never there. Sunshine bleeds into my clothes; it stings my eyes that cry so easily over the sight of an empty chair, but not at a man who curls into a ball in a pool of his own crimson juice. Somewhere in the next town over, there are so many roads with no names, and in the buildings that line them on either side, there are so many faces that disguise their true intentions. Masks worn even to their nearest and dearest, they live a lie through the fear of revealing the monster within. They go their entire lives keeping it together, and then they die as strangers even to themselves. There’s Aphex Twin and a blank TV screen. There are two windows with the blinds drawn and clothes on the floor I don’t recognize. My fingers outstretched, they reach for the keyboard then withdraw. Inwards always inwards, these thoughts do their best to stay hidden, but I always push them out. Children of a warped mind, they suckle me like I once suckled her, and as the priest begs forgiveness, the mob descend and blow him to kingdom come. Nothing is sacred, and nothing is worth saving, least of all love. When you feel as if you’re coming apart, close your eyes and see me unbuttoning your shirt. What happens next is up to you, but as my gaze intensifies, we know there’s only one destination we have in mind.