In the woods next to the quarry, on an old blanket in a clearing between tall trees, red ants crawl through the curls of her hair. They bite her scalp as I touch her. I touch her because I like her. I massage her feet and suckle her big toes as she writhes around on her back like a beetle. Watching as she goes, I’m reminded of the Kafka story. Metamorphosis. I read it back at college, hungover after a night out in town pretending I was human. With her kicking legs kicking up the dusty and dirty leaves that snuckuty snuck onto our blanket, I whisper her name to the sun, and in turn, the sun licks her face sending her to sleep. She sleeps with the angels, down an alley populated by stray cats dancing to The Cure. There are beads of sweat on her upper lip. They resemble milk. I lick them clean off until she wakes with a fright reciting lines from Alice in Wonderland. “But you know he was a pervert, right?” “Yeah,” she sighs, with a beaming smile, “but I can separate the writer from the man. Most can’t.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” I frown. “It means that if I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be with you. You’d be too intolerable by far.”

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