The smoke from the cigarette sweeps around the room like the remnants of a dream. My fingers smell of her, as does my pillow. Notebooks litter the desk. The desk I made a few weeks back. Feels longer. Months. Perhaps even a year. I still think about the dogs, but things feel cloudy. Real, but not really, real? The past is gone, but it’s in my pocket for safekeeping, only I have no pockets, and as I’m patting myself down in a panic, the room dissolves into a bath, and my bones turn to glue as the steam makes me mushy like a piece of gum. It hurts. It always will. So, I raise a glass to the futures that never came to be and smile regardless. It’s not about being flippant; it’s about opening your arms to the ocean and letting the waves take you home. On a beach, where the grains of sand glow like tiny suns, slipping between your toes and burning the tiny hairs that spout from your skin the same as bouts of nervousness. The smoke from my cigarette slips through the window and turns to glass. It’s trying to snow, which means the angels are pulling up the sky like a piece of old carpet, with the dust of heaven sprinkling our dim heads like confetti thrown at a wedding. The clock on the wall is broken. The time it shows, false but somehow true.

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