The bar’s closed. At least it is to me. There’s a lock-in. I tried persuading the bouncer to let me stay, but I fluffed my lines, and now I’m left with the prospect of wandering the streets that are so much more threatening and magical than they are during the day. They know no end. Like a river, or a curl of hair that leads from a pale scalp to a pale breast to a nipple that resembles a crater on some planet I used to peek at through my red telescope when I was a kid. The kid still exists, so does the crater that remains in its vacuum of crystalized space. Yet, the telescope is now buried in some dump along with pornos and baby bones and burnt polaroids containing the faces of those we once loved who hurt us in ways we wish never to remember. It exists, kinda, and yet bears no resemblance to when it once served its purpose so diligently. On my teeth, I taste spirits, both liquid and ethereal. In my belly, my history churns along with the burger and chips I drunkenly ate in an attempt to soak up some of the booze I’ve been drinking since the middle of the afternoon. The days are long. I do my best to make them pass as quickly as I can. People lose their shape and become ideas. Ideas attach themselves to feelings, and with a little ink, and the right word or two, a doorway is created so that I may escape this place without my body coming to harm. Well. The booze and cigarettes certainly aren’t doing me any good, but you catch my drift. I have become a shadowy reflection of the boy I once was. I don’t like it, and yet to be a shadow is far better than to be a pale reflection of what others would have me become. Through the frosted window, I see faces scrunched up in fits of laughter. I hate them, and yet, I wish I could breathe as easy as they. Some things will never change. Other things change invisibly. It’s all a game. It’s all a farce, but perhaps to laugh the same as them is all one can do, even if it makes no sense 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