In the morning, I survive. The hangover, a reminder of my cheap attempt at leaving this place behind knowing full well I’d be back again. Because that’s what drinking is—a half-arsed wish to say goodbye but not having the balls to go the whole way. On mornings like these, I flirt with the death of night and the birth of the day ahead—my head cracked like an egg as the acid in my guts worms its way up my throat—a throat sore from all the smokes smoked in the beer garden of some pub where a thousand lives have played out without anyone ever knowing. Groaning on a thin mattress on the floor, the outlines of people dance about me. I’m sad, yet such sadness is a gift, so I weep and writhe, embracing a sense of release that teases me but never enough to make me come. There’s birdsong and war. There’s the muscle memory of rough sex and the hairs on my upper lip soaked with sweat and the stench of desperation. Lighting a smoke, the king of beer shits follows soon after, and so it goes, I am born once 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