It’s snowing, and the stillness of the moment is time travel. My seed on her chest is a lake. Ancient. Hidden. Godly, like a forest. The blue of her eyes a sunrise, as endless as eternity. The flakes of ice touch my tongue. Fizzing like sweets, they itch my teeth and I giggle like a kid as my fingers dig into her scalp. Beneath my fingers, her hair flows like water and I’m reminded of all the rivers in those towns and cities I’ll never see. The thought of all the lives that come and go without me ever knowing of their presence keeps me up late into the night. It petrifies my limbs until they become as rigid as the branches of the trees that scratch at my bedroom window. These moments exist in the secret seconds. The seconds that are real, but only to me. When I’m gone, it’ll be as if they were never here at all. It’s been this way since I was five. Maybe six. In bed with the curtains wide open, staring at the sky, scared yet in awe of the future past as it waves hello from the other side.

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