On a lazy Sunday evening, I bow down to an absence of time and worship the persistence of memories. They persist like an itch. The wine I’m drinking magnifies everything. It’s quite the dance. I’m mostly lost, but it’s okay, because the pages of the books I read tickle my skin like butterfly wings. They mother my fears and caress that in me which speaks louder than any of the garbled sounds that escape my cumbersome mouth. The moth from before has died. It’s sad, but merely the nature of the universe. I’m somewhere on an island. The streets are strange and the fields glisten like oil. There’s no moon, only trees surrounded by wisps of smoke escaping from parked cars in garages. Those inside the cars are on their way someplace else. They cross there on a lake. They never come back. The distant shore tells stories about those who are damned. Mother’s sons blinded by the sun, and those whose who die not knowing they can fly with wings that have never spread the way they were born to spread. Like the smoke from my cigarette, all the journeys I’ve ever made surround me like horses under starlight—a sight bound to neither words nor meaning.

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