Time is the only thing we have left, and there’s never enough of it. For me, the person that is I, it’s been the same ever since my days in the crib so many years removed from the fate that now awaits me. In my infant air, I lived without a care. But only for a while. Those innocent days have now escaped, and there’s no return from where they came. I’m now a keen observer of chairs. Empty ones. Like the kind Van Gogh had an eye for when he wasn’t busy suffocating moths and butterflies in his killing jar. I’ve also a thing for bad movies from the ‘80s involving incestuous relations between brothers and sisters willing to eat from the same tree. Her fruit is my fruit. Her body an extension of mine. When she puts on her black lipstick, I watch from the foot of the bed like a sinister only child. Rubbing my hands, I see many teeth. Mostly smooth skin, and a beautiful neck. I long to crush it—to snuff her out so that she may haunt my dreams no longer. They bought me a watch to celebrate my life, but all it did was reinforce the dull nature of my design. I picked it apart. Flushed away the tiny arms and chewed the leather strap, swallowing the remains as if they were chunks of venison. I like to be alone. I like to smoke. I am a collection of bones that once dated a girl named Patricia. She had pretty lips and red gums, and eyes that spoke to me of what it meant to be a piece of a puzzle, but she got with some other lover, and for weeks after I roamed the playground looking for fistfights and calamity to take my brain away from what hurt most. For a twelve-year-old, it worked pretty well. Now, now there’s only, me, Fripp and Eno. The music slithers through my ears into my wormy brain. There’s wine and rain while Patricia lies dead in her grave. I say she’s dead. She’s gonna live longer than me. Her diet is good and proper and clean, and most importantly, she believes only in what can be seen.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US