Morning bliss in spite of a tender belly, and although the mirror’s crack’d, the light comes in and touches her face as if she were still just a kid. Those curls of her hair and the redness in her cheeks. Those bones in her neck and the soft skin of a sometimes lover with a taste for fantasy more than real life. On the streets below the window, footsteps belonging to shapes with bowed heads come and go as if they were never really there, and in the store where we buy our wine, an old man buys a winning scratch card and spends his winnings on five more. The years keep spinning out of control, and the hurting only grows, but where there’s a dream there’s a reason to believe, and so your faith glows. Morning bliss on her upper lip, and when she kicks away the sheets and touches herself, the flowers on the windowsill that are not yet dead turn their heads and call her name. Through the warm, dusty air, the music they make causes the cats in the gardens to stand on their back legs with their paws raised high to the hidden sun. It’s a simple gesture, but the meaningful ones always are. Moving her fingers to the rhythm of nature’s song, she bites and spits and hisses and chews, and as I observe her body in the mirror on the wall, she flickers in and out of view. Like the memory of some dream, she comes and goes with her taste upon my tongue like the colour of a thorny rose. When she reappears, she curls her toes and bears her teeth, and as I’m standing there in the nude, I close my eyes and watch her blossom into something new.

A Journal for Damned Lovers UK

A Journal for Damned Lovers US

Anthology UK / Anthology US