The sky is a sea, or so she thinks. As for me, I’m inspecting the blood beneath my fingernails. It’s smeared across the keyboard of my laptop. Should clean it, but there’s an idea in me and I’m doing my best to squeeze it out like a turd that just won’t drop. Leaning back in my chair, I smoke a cigarette and look out the window. Rain. Always rain. Makes me feel natural. Like I’m almost human. Somewhere out there, she legging it through a park. She’s slipping on wet grass. There are swans in the river to her left, and as she flies by, they spread their wings in celebration of her fleeting appearance. She’s gritting her teeth and cursing every near miss as her feet go in several directions causing her to snatch at thin air before regaining her balance. She’s a fool on the hill, that’s for sure, and yet everywhere she goes she paints these days with such vivid colours that go so close to leaving me blind. Getting up, I press my face against the window and see not what’s really there, but rather what I wish to see. Such an act of faith saps the strength from my bones, and no doubt once the words come and go I’ll collapse onto the bed and won’t move again for the rest of the night. Perhaps I won’t even have the capacity to think. Perhaps that would be best. The blood on my fingers is changing colour. It’s crusting over tiny wounds that never seem to heal. Popping them in my mouth, I think of her as she’s running over a bridge. For a second or so she stops and eyes up the droplets of rain as they fall like bombs onto the surface of the river. Thousands upon thousands of tiny bombs exploding just for her. The fishes down below see her staring from above, and in the trees, squirrels swings from branches awaiting her next move as she licks the rain from her lips and squeezes tight her eyes. She’s soaked right though, and although she’s almost home, she stands there smiling like a good luck charm, and that’s what she is to me. Never that close, but never too far. Away from my arms, but always in my heart, shining bright even when the light within has seemingly been snuffed out.

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.com