Author S. K. Nicholas

Down a street in some city of which I’ve long since forgotten, the roads are wet and cigarette smoke escapes the mouths of those I share out my sentence with. They tell me to get a better job, and that if I do, I’ll be happy. When my response is that I don’t want a better job, and that being happy comes from dedicating my life to writing, they shake their heads not recognising the intent behind my words. It’s useless they say; you need to be like the rest, and then things will be better. I smile and politely agree, but in my head, I’m imagining the lot of them being stoned to death in a desolate colosseum somewhere in Syria. Such dreary fuckers they are with an inflated sense of misplaced self-worth that would make even an artist blush. Dreamless bodies who make love not to gaze into the eyes of God, but to achieve a brief moment of rest bite from a life otherwise completely lacking in faith. On a beach, there swims a girl who’s just like me. In love with the sight of houses swallowed by a night darker than the deepest of seas, she’s got a thing for soft hands. She likes rubbing my cock and swallowing all the way to the base, but I soon lose interest and find myself pining for a drink. There are times when it gets too much, and I scratch my arms so desperate for a taste of something sweet. Raining from the early hours straight through until evening, my soul recovers from having been corroded by others. In the puddles that form near a bus stop, an old woman tells me stories from her past, and it reminds me of the book Bid Time Return. Love can travel through time; it’s true. I’ve seen it happen; it’s not a lie. And yet I wish it happened to me, oh, I wish it would happen to me. With outstretched hands, snow collects on fingertips that burn at the merest of sensations. Open-mouthed, they remind me of a Christmas spent in the arms of a lover as July waited patiently beneath the fallen paper of an unwrapped heart.