You fall asleep clutching a half-eaten packet of Quavers. Taking them from your hand, I place them in my lap and then rest my head on yours while looking out the window. It’s been raining since yesterday and won’t stop. Everywhere’s flooded. Even our hearts. With a little food in your belly, you felt much better, and after telling me the rest of your dream and how you ended up becoming a sunflower, the biggest one in the field, you told me you were going to close your eyes. You weren’t falling asleep though, you were quite adamant about that. Looking at me suspiciously, you eventually closed them and nestled yourself against my shoulder. When I spoke your name, you moaned a little and fell silent. It’s half an hour until the bus takes us to the stop at the bottom of my road, so plenty of time for you to not sleep, then. The streets are an ocean of umbrellas and puddles. They have an ebb and flow that hypnotizes me until I too find myself struggling to stay awake. Taking your hand in mine, I spread your fingers and explore the lines of your palm. Making circular motions purposely trying to tickle you, you moan and open one eye. It’s an accusing eye, one filled with disdain, so I stop tickling and close your hand again. As you go back to not sleeping, the bus comes to a halt due to traffic and my attention’s drawn to a market stall selling vegetables. Nothing out of the ordinary there, and yet some of them have been placed in dog baskets. You know, the ones moulded out of plastic. Potatoes, onions. Even a selection of turnips and cabbages. Is this normal? I know it’s Luton, but surely this can’t be right? I want to wake you and point it out but think better of it. Looking at the buildings that line this stretch of the street, I remember my grandad once telling me how he saw a gravestone in a shop window with his name on it. He had been on a bus also, and much to his surprise, he saw his details engraved in stone a good forty or so years before his death. It was in this same area, too. Up ahead, worshipers come pouring out of a mosque. They pour like the rain as they join the sea of umbrellas and puddles.

A Journal for Damned Lovers Volumes 1 & 2 on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers Volumes 1 & 2 on Amazon.com