When I’m not working or writing I tend to wrap myself in a dressing gown and lie on the floor while staring at my hands. There’s flesh, but that’s what everyone sees. My secret desire is to see bone. Not because I want to but because it’s the truth and that’s the golden ticket for the likes of us, right? Bodies not as flowers or pleasure machines but skeletons wrapped in organic matter. The simple yet unrecognisable truth we are conditioned to overlook. Her smile, though- surely that can’t just be down to chance? And the dreams we seek in each other’s eyes- tell me that’s just chemical- I dare you. And yet despite our poetic tendencies, aren’t we all just ants? Are we not mere pieces of dust floating through the universe? I hate dust. Can’t stand the stuff. I’ve firmly believed for many years that cleanliness is next to godliness, and that dust has no place in my life even though it’s what I am beneath my words and clever conversation. Such a contradiction. Such a bummer. When I’m looking out the window, I think about the past, and I think about death. There are so many things that run through my simple head. Some of them make sense, and the rest end up here. You know what I’m like. Here and there. Sober and drunk. Dreams, no dreams, sometimes more dreams, sometimes bite marks that lead to evenings spent fingering the gaps between the floorboards searching for a way out. The mirror on the wall- it shows me who I used to be, but not what I’m becoming. No features, no form, only regret. I’m split down the middle unable to choose which half I want to stick with most. The real or the unreal. Is there even a difference? And what if the two have swapped places? What if to be real is not just to breathe but to leave behind this cage and drift as far away as possible? Unattached and without chains- an orb slipping through the trees of a forest deep into the night, never to return. I was told this was fantasy- but what if it isn’t?
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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