Through squinting eyes, the liquid swirls down my throat as if it weren’t poison but water. I’m somebody’s sun, and she’s somebody’s daughter. We all are. Even the trees. Even the fleas on the street dogs as they howl out of hunger as the sun comes down on another broken town resembling a nugget of shit refusing to be flushed down the toilet. The cigarette slips between my fingers. It tumbles. To the floor. To the bottom of the ocean. The time is, regretful, but it doesn’t matter. It dictates my life, but only because I wish to deny the ties that bind. I don’t believe in such ties, but they believe in me. Ever since I was old enough to think, like three? Back when the birds and the bees were merely a means to an end. Back when taking a shit in my nappy was the worse fear I could ever imagine. Such fears linger, like the scent of a lover, disappearing into the darkness of winter. The best place to be is lost at sea, or deep in the woods, wandering around with no wish to be found. So many wishes. So many near misses when the bridges we have built crumble like the spines of books in doctors waiting rooms, bleached by the sun and fingered to death by those with no time left to sell.

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