On some plane not too dissimilar to this one, all of the unresolved moments from my life shimmer like fresh snow beneath moonlight. It’s cold and as silent as the grave, and as I squint my eyes through the smoke of my cigarette, the features of her face come alive once again. It’s 2 am. I dreamt of the snow from one of my earliest childhood memories, and now it’s snowing. The town is unseen—the cities beyond, as distant as the stars that form Orion’s Belt. I’m unsteady on my feet. Too much wine, you see. The slippers I’m wearing are soaked right through, and somewhere to my left, a cat is meowing. Its meows are prayers to the magic of the night, the same way my words are prayers to that which I know is real but can’t feel. The world is full of hollow truths. Mouths that speak without saying a thing. People who become jobs. People as machines. It’s a long way down, and the older you get, the more you fall. So I act the fool, but only because, on the inside, I know exactly how things are, and how one day, after we escape the chains of the physical world, we will be free. The smoke leaving my mouth wraps around the lazy snowflakes drifting from swollen clouds, and even though I’m frozen to the bone, I laugh regardless.

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