With the wind blowing through the keyhole, I nervously part her hair and place a song upon her lips. It’s an evening song; one that’s even in all the right places. Her lips are pink; as pink as the lips she never kisses with. My body ages, but I have no age, and when she smiles, I feel higher than a kite’s ever flown. Tethered only by a flimsy piece of string, my spirit is shaken clean out of my skin, but such is love. Such are the feelings that shimmer and shake beneath the sun for the one I call home. On a chair in a garden beneath a tree with leaves that are grey not green, I chew my fingernails. I don’t need to. They don’t taste of anything good, but as the doorway opens, I can’t concentrate for shit. Once I bite a slither of nail off, I spit it into the grass where it’s carried away by a marching band of insects. They teem, buzz, stop and stare. They presume I’m gripped by some form of mild despair, but really, it’s because I’m so nervous as to what I’ll find on the other side of the door. Her door. She has a tiny scar on her cheek. While she sleeps, I gently pick at it, wishing to travel back in time to a moment from her life that I’ll never get to taste first hand. Her door takes me forwards, never back. That’s where her scars come into play. After I’m done picking them, I sniff where she’s been. If I do it at the same time as peeking through her door, the past and future dance with the present, and the music I hear is enough to make me come without being touched. If I place my ear against her belly, it’s like hearing the waters of my mother’s womb from a time before, and as they crash against the rocks of modern life, everything in between is but a dream within a dream.

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