In the mirror, I contemplate my limbs. If I were a woman, I’d be a Walter Sickert nude. All crude and ready for the knife. Y’know he was Jack the Ripper, right? I read it in a magazine. If I tuck my junk between my legs, I look just like Buffalo Bill from Silence of The Lambs. Back in the day, these limbs were all baby-like. All beautiful and new. We were once so pure, then along came the curse of curious thought, and we’ve been riddled with sin ever since. Still, it is what it is. We all reach for it. All seek out its itch like greedy pigs swimming in shit—seek out its tit like the horny ol’ toads we are. The mirror’s many years old. It sits on the fireplace in my room. To think of the images it’s captured. To imagine the ghosts that linger in its domain. Studying the grey flesh of my man suit, it flowers like a chip wrapper in the palm of a lonely drunk wandering the shore in search of a way back home.

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