In the snow, there is scripture. It spells out her needs and wants. She doesn’t want a friend, that’s for sure, but needs a lover. A lover who can dip his finger into her the same way a greedy kid sticks his tongue into a bowl of icing sugar. Soft so soft. So delicate, like the touch of cotton wool, or the memory of bed linen adorned with dinosaurs and American wrestlers wearing tight yellow pants. Those cool pillows were so plump. So enticing. Long before death reared its ugly head, such a place was a realm of comfort no one else knew. No one but you. At a quarter past three, my eyes are shut tight by sleepy. Behind them, are the dreamy thoughts of flames slipping beneath doors on some tower high so high in the sky. It was there as a kid, but not as an adult. It still exists somewhere though, in a bubble of buried thought the likes of which I can’t decipher. A hillside. Desolate. Leviticus. Knocks on the walls from bloodied knuckles signalling a desire for sexual contact when such contact is limited only to fantasy. Footsteps linger. Tides rolling like pastry. Waves as large as biscuit mountains. There are shipwrecks. There are tentacles wrapped around her thighs that are as slimy as seaweed, and yet, to touch the yucky matter tickles me like nothing else. Girls are gross, I was told. They’re made of frogs, licorice and lice, and yet, how they make me grind my teeth all through the night. Ocean. Leviathans. Drifting, sinking, and then rising like the rain. The rain rises and then falls into the open mouths of kids stood in playgrounds, thankful to be alive without knowing the reasons why.

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