The movement of a body, bathed in crescent light. Light from the Mourning Star at four in the morning as it illuminates a garden belonging to a building that now exists only in memory. Laughing like hyenas, we puke on a floral carpet and then scoop the contents of our bellies into empty glasses of beer that are no longer empty in the same way dead stars are no longer dead but alive as soon as their distant light dances before our inky eyes. On the sidewalk. Kicked to the kerb. Spinning like leaves before being propelled to some other place, these bones of ours are made of lace. On a map, in a drawer, that was opened before I got here, I see acedia’s blackest hole, and countless pale, almost translucent dotted lines linking England to countries of which I know nothing about. I’m told and shown they’re very much real, but until I see them for myself, they’re as imaginary as the monsters beneath my bed, and those within my squishy head. Good cheek bones. Wide hips. Ships with algae anchors that scrape the seabed the same as a metal comb scrapes the skull of a chain-smoker who watches the clock waiting for the bus that takes him to his daily nine-hour hell. Crosses on a wall—hot-dog stall. Paths as daggers as fallopian tubes. Beard on lip. Robe around crotch. Overgrown gardens, and the secrets belonging to flowers that for so many years have wished only for the presence of someone with an ear to lend. You can spend it when you’re dead. You can unravel a sheet of paper and use it as a mast. No plasters. No medication. A windmill slowly rotating in a spun mind, only there are no sails, and this mind is no longer mine but someone else’s, if indeed it was ever mine at all.

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