Author S. K. Nicholas

She looks a bit like Veronica Lake in her heydey. The same peekaboo hairstyle; the same voluptuous, petite body. She, along with everyone else that has ever been born, was created from the death of a star, and a billion years from now when she’s dead and gone, her soul stuff will linger on like the dust that collects on mirrors that adorn hospital wards, or perhaps the beads of sweat that trickle down the neck of someone suffering from appendicitis curled into a ball at the foot of their bed biting down on a wooden spoon. Sometimes there’s happiness. There’s a sublime beauty in just being, because the chances of life are so rare, and to be here is a gift indeed. But being surrounded by other people is crushing, and each day I spend listening to their hollow ways, the more they soil the beauty that’s fading quicker than the light cast by a matchstick in the dark of a forest. Do you remember Micro Machines? Do you remember reading Goosebumps books? Do you still fall asleep thinking about the time you masturbated in your grandparents garden when you were twelve? Oh, the weather was so warm, and as you pulled down your pants at the sight of the girl next door sunbathing, you couldn’t quite help yourself. Life is what you make of it. You can worship women. You can worship money. You can bow down to the system. Each avenue has its merits, but know that when the day comes to evaporate, your life pursuits will be over, and that will be that.  You’re not above being human- you are what you are- nothing more. The ocean is a water infection; it’s an illness with Christmas lights wrapped around it. I used to think her womb and the oceans were one and the same, but the older I got, the more it became clear that such a thing was wishful thinking. Almost everything is a wish of some sort, because as lucky as we are even to be here, it isn’t enough. Sitting cross-legged in the dark while looking out the window, it’s the same as when I was a kid, only the shadows don’t scare me now, they’re more like a friend or a lover who has no need for others. And these words- how they keep pouring. How they drip like honey from glistening lips, or brain matter from a bullet wound to the back of the skull. There’s no point to any of these fleeting words, and yet their very existence is a victory when for so long there were no words at all. This state of being is an act of defiance; it’s a smile while being blindfolded at a firing range, or a fit of laughter at the sight of a cloud of bombs falling from the sky above.