It’s late morning, and the town stirs but not us. We toss and turn, fingering the remnants of our dreams as they recede like the tide. There’s dust and sweaty love. Bedsheets stained with last night’s lust as the gaps between the floorboards speak to me of my days at university. If I take a peek, I see oil on canvas. Nights of solitary scrawling and the first fumblings with girls who ate me alive. I had a cute face. Was shy. Dry witted. Those days radiate like sunshine sparkling upon the surface of puddles down grey streets near fields containing rivers with neither an end nor a start. Rolling onto my side, slithers of dreams creep from the corners of my eyes. They solidify into crusties. The crusties tumble down my cheeks like boulders. I think of Sisyphus, and then Camus in his crashed car, all crumpled up and contorted, reaching for the god he never believed in. She slightly snores. Her face is buried beneath hair and pillow. The blinds reveal snatches of the real world, but the real world isn’t real at all. Those who think it is, have a distinct lack of imagination, and those who lack imagination offer as much sensuality as a blow-up doll. Staring at the ceiling, I’m a future corpse. The blotches on my flesh a muted warning that these days are going before you have the first inkling that they’re gone.

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