There are dreams. Dreams of throwing a pot of boiling water over a love rival, and those of Fred Astaire tapdancing along a line of coke stretching from the forest to the mouth of the town as it swallows all those who stick around and linger. They linger like drunks at a kebab van wishing for the night to never end, their teeth as yellow as the sickly lights shining on their sickly faces. There are teeth as sharp as the memory of the onset of puberty. Teeth stained by coffee and lipstick traces. There’s war and there’s sex. There’s genital mutilation and the muscle memory of using Teletext on ecstasy looking for information on a way out of this place that’s become a maze shrunk to the size of a shiny, tiny coin. 3 am. 1 am. Tomorrow ticking into yesterday. Crisp packets full of cigarette ash as the wind and rain outside pound the pavement like the drunken footsteps of an abusive father looking for someone to belittle. Someone little, and too girly for their own good. There’s howling and seduction. Myths regarding running in the rain with cigarettes between fingers stinking of KFC and shame. There’s music in a restaurant. A live band. Cocktails and a trip to a cashpoint as the night escapes and I wish how I wish that everything we did could exist on the same page and maybe it does but few are willing to read it. Picasso’s Blue Period. Pollock’s floppy cock and his rage at the eternal choking at the hand of his mother’s umbilical cord. There’s a chord I know, but I keep it to myself. It slips between my teeth when I sleep in a state of perpetual fever.

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