We’re at this place that does all the food. There are people I don’t know. People I’ll never see again. The room is long. Rectangular. It reminds me of an anus, like the one belonging to that guy from the viral video who put a jar up his arse only for it to implode. He picked the pieces out, didn’t he? He picked them out as blood poured like water from a tap. Or facet, if you prefer. The walls are the same colour as the blood. There are shadows swallowing most of what I don’t know, which is why I hold her close. The door to the bathroom is pockmarked with holes. Holes caused by fists. Explosive moments of drunken sincerity by men with brains smaller than their balls. Balls covered in gunk. Balls as junk like weeds in a garden. In the beer garden out back, cars speed past in the dark. The cemetery across the road houses the ashes of my grandparents. It’s dimly lit, though. I can’t make anything out. Shadows swallow mostly everything. Her smile kicks up the dust in my mind like a gust of wind capable of tearing the roots of a tree from the ground it once called home. Home is her arms. Home is my father. Home is a patch of land housing a collection of memories the way a jar contains the remains of a butterfly, once free, now chained to a melody never to be heard again. Not in this life, anyhow.

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