There are two bees having sex in a forest next to a bucket of water containing frogspawn. There are streaks of pink hair as flaky fingers lift a tulip to a chin. The bees rise. The fingers that touch the tulip that sits beneath the chin belong to a girl becoming a woman, like a sapling becoming a tree. The sapling was burped out from the mouth of God. God has worms. We are his worms. We writhe in his belly and dream of being something other than worms. We can dream of tulips, perhaps, or baby frogs leaping over streams that in some way resemble fallopian tubes. We travelled through the tubes to be here, but now we are here, we don’t know what to do. There’s static. In our eardrums, leftover from the beginning of the universe. There are also tears, as well as bricks that make bridges that tower over tiny humans in the early hours of the morning in leafy towns prone to drowning. There’s grainy black and white footage of her on the bed. Her belly writhes with worms. The hairs on her legs are like those of a dog. In the garden between her legs, a dead mouse rests on a blanket of buttercups. God isn’t too much interested. He’s got bigger fish to fry. For the mouse, though, it matters. In the avalanche of time that crushes everything in its path, the life and memory of the tiny mouse was meaningless, but if only for a while, we pay our respects to the faithful departed because none of us are getting out alive, and although we each have our own shape, our atoms are linked like daisy chains. If she clenches, and breathes deep, she can come without being touched. If she does it right, then in her belly, the fairies she once danced with in her childhood are brought to life once more. De Sade. Tetsuo. Dead leaves. A market stall selling dildos once belonging to Jill Dando. I once walked past her house. The house where someone shot her on the doorstep. It was years after the fact. There was no blood, but the echo of death reverberated deep within my brain before rattling through the alcoholic bones of my ribcage.

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