There are blowjobs on dusty beds in cramped basements and drunken butterflies on tipsy noses snorting steam from windows overlooking flooded car parks. Procrastination is the only thing I’ve ever done well. Putting off everything so I can do nothing. Cigarettes and coffee—under the clock in the kitchen eating tinned breakfasts with no nutritional value whatsoever, but the grease is cheap and fills one’s belly just right for a hard day’s drinking while searching for something dark to lighten the night. The rain is God’s tears. Neon. Alcoholic. The future is uncertain, and yet it’s been here forever. I am me a thousand times over. The branches of a tree, picking at the roots that in turn reach for the branches like a babe in arms gasping for the nipple. I was never afforded such a luxury. Goats milk is all I got. The real stuff evaded me like a good idea does now. All I want is a drink—to sink into a hole and merge with the dirt that will deliver me back to where I came. There was once a hole, but not anymore. There was once a sunset that seemed to stretch as far as I could see, but those hazy afternoons are now far behind me. I guess it’s because love is such a tempting beast—such a devil. It promises to take you back to before the curtains closed on the life you once knew. To be born again in a kiss; to come alive in the eyes of another. To hesitate for just a moment as life gets stuck in the back of your throat.

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