Not fairy tales, but desire lines born from the grease around her eyes. Iron spiders. Collapsing flowers. April passing to May as the leaves in her childhood garden kick up around her naked, dancing feet. Size four; one day to be swollen. Vortex this. Vortex that. Analytical minds blinded by the many guises of love—but not the ones that count. The ones that count are littered down the lonely sidewalks we try our hardest to pass without looking, but who are we to deny the reasons why—such reasons have the ability to break apart our tiny lives—and that wouldn’t be good at all. Internal infernos. Biscuit tins on the outer reaches of childish hands that will one day shed their skins. Under the skins are bones. Whitish grey sticks of cement that stop us from folding in on ourselves, but we do that anyway, so they’re not much good. Labyrinths. Stilettoes. Sunday evening car rides from a city of sea to green fields of what used to be. Beneath the blades of grass and swathes of mud, are the outlines of buildings that existed centuries before we took our first snatches of recycled air. They call it archaeology. Everything’s archaeology, when you think about it. Everything is a lingering shadow belonging to an extinct sun. There’s nowhere to run. There never is. The roots of the trees push up through the squishy ground. They listen to the calling of stars. It’s raining now. Quiet—like the sounds of the sleepy old stones in the nearby church. Its doors are closed to the lurgy public, forcing God to contemplate his many mistakes by himself.

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