Author S. K. Nicholas

Like a fox rummaging through trash in search of food, or a woman in full bloom being sniffed out by every leper within a ten-mile radius. In due course, we transform again and again until the time comes to leave it all behind. Shapeless and without form, we dance in an unlit car park and know what it is to be free. Breaking down and falling apart for the first time since our early childhood, we forget how to put one foot after the other. Unable to do anything other than collapse, we slip out of view, and there we remain until the time comes to emerge with our faith intact ready to change the world. Like a rabbit in the headlights, or a deaf and dumb kid playing on a pinball machine unaware that someone’s got a knife held to their throat, the future is a delicate thread. As the blade goes in and out quicker than the eye can see, the thread is severed as we dance in circles several feet in the air, and as the animals roll on their backs with their paws twitching as if in dream, our fingers touch heaven, and the pain of our curse is left to rot along with all of our mistakes. Swirling like clouds, we move around the moon and smile at those we left behind because we were never like them to begin with, and as the tears roll down our cheeks, the glow of our sorrow is the most beautiful thing ever. It shines over the forests and looks down upon all the sleeping children keeping them safe from the shadows that stalk their tiny footsteps. It lifts them up and places them in orbs of cotton wool and candy floss so the dreams in their delicate heads play out in safety until they breathe in the scent of mummy’s morning coffee and the smell of her favourite lipstick. The years make me bleed, and they twist and churn my guts, but I still worship the innocent, because those without sin are worth fighting for. The rest are neither here nor there, much like this mess of a man I seem to have become against my best wishes. With eyes closed and breath held, I want to be just like them, and with my head on the pillow and my knees pulled up to my chest, I plead with God to let me sleep until the world stops spinning and to feel nothing other than the purest form of love as all that makes me suffer slowly goes away.