Author S. K. Nicholas

In a disused phone booth, I piss away a week’s wages and shiver as if someone were walking over my grave. With my mouth wide open and fingers clenched, I wonder how I got here but the events of the evening have long since escaped me. Observing the streets from relative obscurity, the sights and sounds that ring out make my skin itch. This form of beauty they worship, it’s as trashy and as deep as the puddle of piss at my feet. It’s an imitation of an imitation. A copy of a copy. And yet everyone walks around oblivious to their fickle and flightless ways. There are lovers kissing in a bus shelter, and beyond them in the local cemetery, a group of kids are trying to set fire to several cans of Lynx Africa. One explodes causing the group to flee in every direction, but the lovers keep kissing. Is it love, or just a one-off? Will they wake in the morning and celebrate with an embrace, or will one of them scarper before the other wakes with hazy memories of oral sex swimming around in their mushy heads? Probably the latter, I would say. Humans are dirty by nature, but when they try pretending they’re something more, it just makes me want to heave. I make no bones about my condition nor my place in society. I’m on the outside by some miles, and I’m just inches away from unravelling, but this to me is a gift and shall be celebrated until I’m in the ground. Whispering her name as the lights of a speeding ambulance illuminate my face, a squirrel inches towards the booth before standing on its hind legs eyeing me up and down. Looking at him with curious eyes, I finish emptying my bladder and step outside. Kneeling down, I kiss my teeth and offer him my hand, but he nonchalantly moves off. The lovers are walking away now. The guy has his arm wrapped around the girl’s waist with his mouth on her neck, but there’s no sense of intimacy, only ownership, and I predict after blowing his load in her mouth he’ll move on and she’ll cut herself to pieces for falling for the cheapness of his words until another comes along promising something different yet the same. The night is dying and growing. It nurses my fears yet opens up old wounds. Moving head down with both my hands planted deep in my pockets, I leave it all behind not caring for anything other than the dream of sleep.

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.com