My childhood flutters like a moth. In the flapping of its invisible wings, I recall a cardboard cutout of Sonic the Hedgehog. My nan disliked him, but to me, his spiky, blue nature ruled my eight-year-old brain. The cutout resided in town, in a store that stood derelict for many years after. In those years, my grandparents died, I left and returned, and everything happened the way it does for everyone. For a brief moment in time, though, he reached out to me whenever I passed, offering me a taste of unbridled fantasy. Even at such a young age, fantasy was all I ever wished for. The ability to escape my bedroom window and fly to the stars. To exist where there were no ends, only beginnings. Digressing somewhat, it always strikes me as arrogant how God made the universe so big. If God’s a guy, though, it makes sense. He’s just another man, thinking bigger makes better when all it does is cover up a lack of love. While kids are slices of gold, adults are balls of brokenness, picking up speed with the passage of years that spiral like dead leaves. Most of the time, we take others down with us, the fury of our momentum akin to a fever not quelled by any medicine. A bit like love. A bit like despair. The despair of walking the streets in the pouring rain and finding nothing to look at other than old crisp packets full of dirty water and slugs.

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