The wine plays a melody on my bones as if they were the keys of a xylophone. In my zygomatic arch, the memories of outlines spark despite the dampness creeping beneath my clothes. If I squint my eyes, there are shadows of my hands as they once were. They’ve been so many places. Touched so many faces, yet here in this lonely hour, they appear as they always have—withered. Deformed. Unable to write anything with discernible meaning. I haven’t learned. I never learn. No matter where I go, the thing inside of me is always there—rattling like a coin in a jar. The reason behind its being so near yet so far. Raindrops fall into my eyes and become tears. Blinking them away, the melody drifting from a passing car is both a feather to my balls and a dagger to my heart. I am alive, yet my time here has been over since before I was born. The fragmentary islands I inhabit whip me into a frenzy. They lift me to the heavens only to push me under, jokingly poking fun at my fleeting days as the stars in the sky race around the shooting sun while we breathe in the dust of these funky, opaque hours. Hours that mean everything and nothing. Hours that are little more than sand.

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