When I unzip myself and piss, I miss the toilet and spray the bathroom floor. Some of it sprinkles my toes, and I’m reminded of a drunken memory from my teenage years when I pissed all down myself on a night in town. My trousers and shoes were covered and the group I was in pointed and laughed. Swaying in my feverish state, the bubble of time and space is very much with me. The bridges between the moments that have made me the man I am, intact and untouched by the scum of man. Some I should’ve burned for sure, but they keep me from coming apart like the bones inside my flesh. Old rooms. Old places. Images of dogs on their backs with their bare bellies facing the ceiling with no ounce of shame that their naughty bits are on show for all and sundry to gawp at. The outlines of their bodies are so real, yet they exist in dust. Who knows, it could be a drunken dream or perhaps the flickering in between that exists when the drudgery of day awaits the magic of night. It’s at night when the light burns brightest, which is why I come alive while others seek the cheapness of sleep. I miss those furry sods. Their stupid faces and the softness of their touch as their ghosts dance about my sleeping limbs. Like phantoms, they howl into the dead night like a spooked car alarm, its cries ringing out for miles to an audience of no one.

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