Author S. K. Nicholas

I remember the ostrich that walked up and down the street where I live, and how in the early hours of the morning, it would peck at my front door trying to force me out into the cold and biting January air. It died soon after, struck by a vehicle with no licence plates. The vehicle was found later that day, burning in a field of dead sunflowers of no use to anyone. I also remember a girl I knew several years ago, and how in the fantasies that littered my brain, the two of us would find ourselves hidden away in a storage room on the top floor of where we worked, and how she’d perform a certain act on me that would make my throat tighten. It almost happened for real once, but I panicked and ran not before tripping over an upturned table and spraining my wrist. The shame was terrible, and she had such a tight body, but I just couldn’t do it. She deserved better. In a crowded bar where beautiful people dance with only one thing on their mind, I scrawl words onto a sheet of paper with a pencil I stole from Argos. I’m an alien taking notes of a species I don’t understand. Sometimes there’s stuff that feels familiar, but most of it just goes straight over my head. Opening the palm of my hand, I see so many lines that surely have no future. They end without ever beginning, and yet what worries me most is knowing she’s so far away, and so far from my reach. Her body is a weapon; it’s a poem with no words that rolls off the tongue like a french kiss on the balcony of some apartment in the depths of London. Overlooking the Thames, I’m a ghost among so many without a home. In the glare of fluorescent lights, I’m stood wondering where to go next.