Civil servants. Slaves. Tiny bits of dust clinging to imaginary dignity. Wine in bellies trudging down streets that best belong in memory but stick around regardless. Like a dead cigarette on the bottom of your shoe or a piece of gum stuck to your wobbly arse. She bleeds. She is a woman. It’s a full moon. Her mouth is a reason to exist when reasons are hard to find. Her smile is an exclamation mark. There’s mystery to it for sure, and yet it’s also a full stop. It points to what’s been and to what has yet to pass. It’s right there before me, and I kiss it because I can. Old London pubs. The ‘60s into the ‘90s. Trips to the Tate. Giant spiders squashed by giant clouds. Kids pushed off balconies. Pushers clad in clobber clutched as if money were a viable substitute for love. We are actors our entire lives, pretending we have it together when really, all we will ever be is a series of thoughts and feelings that come and go like the chimes of an ice-cream van after school, gone before we figure out where they are, and where they might lead. The bells of St. Martins. She owes me three farthings, or is it four? Tonight was the fourth time we fucked for sure. Not that I’m keeping count, but I like to count. It keeps me real. It keeps me eerie. Like a bedsheet blown off a washing line, floating above the back garden until it escapes into the woods, never to be seen again.

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