In the puddles that stretch from my feet to the river, ten years feels like a lifetime. Longer, even. In the broken reflections zigzagging around my soaked shoes, the past and present dance like quarrelsome lovers. Steam snorts from my nostrils, and without realising, I leave a snail trail in my wake—my winding wanderings visible like the regretful scars of self-harm. The day is done, yet it’s not a day at all. Hasn’t been for years. The coffee in my belly will soon swim with wine and the ripples in the puddles will become waves as big as buildings. I still remember the planes flying into the twin towers. I swear it was a handful of years ago and not two decades. The world was more colourful back then. Things were lighter. My old dog was alive and far from the bits of buried dust he was to become. Now, everything is tiny and bewildering, my ideas dwarfed by feelings and thoughts that shackle me to the shadows of that which I wish to let go. The absurdity of life is a never-ending joke with a punchline I can’t for the life of me decipher, and the older I get, the less sense I find in what it brings. The water is black. It moves invisibly. Like the silent regret that sticks to the leaves of the trees as they watch our passage from precious children into hardened adults, so fearful of the light that radiates from beyond.

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