As I hurtle through space on a tiny blue rock with no clue as to what’s going on, the only place that keeps me safe from harm is the memory of your cradling arms. Everything else is pointless, more or less. Life is big, and yet it’s also microscopically small. Atoms are pretty much nothing—like a fart in the Albert Hall—and all that has ever happened to me will one day be washed out to sea like a dead cigarette, and yet it’s happened nonetheless. There have been painful goodbyes and silences that have lasted a lifetime. Days that have felt like years, and years that have passed like sunless afternoons that come and go like fleeting rainstorms that wash away nothing at all. This afternoon in question, I wish for a glimpse of the sun, but there’s only grey, and as I study my reflection, I’m still just a kid, yet my body aches like that of a man. My entire life has been spent fighting an invisible war, a war within myself that can never be won, only endured. It never used to be like this, and I’m not quite sure when it all went wrong, only that it happened without me even realising. Now, there’s no going back to those carefree days, not even in the world of words I try so hard to bring to life. But, still, I think of you, and as this strange world of mine spins like a spinning totem on the edge of reason, there’s no way of knowing whether your love for me is as real as the air in my lungs or imagined like a cinematic kiss between two actors with no feelings for each other whatsoever.

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