In some fast food joint in the centre of town, I eat a burger and chips while looking up your Instagram profile on my phone. Those around me are discussing the film they’ve just seen, but I’m outside of their conversation. Looking at you on the broken screen of my Samsung, I smile at your smile, and I laugh at how even after so long, you’re still my girl. Rolling a cigarette, a fight breaks out in the entrance of the restaurant between two groups of kids. Part of me hopes it gets nasty, and that a knife is produced and one or more of the fuckers gets stabbed up. Perhaps they’ll die? It wouldn’t be much of a loss. What do they have to offer this place anyway? Yeah, I know, I’m still so nihilistic, but at least I’ve got something to show for my life as opposed to those boneheads. Focused on you as you look up at me from beneath the table, I close my eyes and picture us together. There’s love sometimes, and it reaches inside my chest and squeezes my heart back to life. And then there’s absence. The absence of you, and the absence of her. Eating the last of my chips as the kids erupt into violence before washing away further down the street in a wave of mutilation, I chew my fingernails and think about your legs and your neck and then The Oort Cloud and what lies beyond. If you were to go far enough, would you meet those who have gone before? If you went even further, would you meet God? If you did, would he be alive, or would he have gone in his sleep like those old people that used to play cards with my grandparents in that room in the library at the top of the road they used to live at? I never knew you back then, how could I, and yet somehow you’ve invaded my memories just the same as you’ve done to my dreams.
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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