Author S. K. Nicholas

x and i: a novel

a journal for damned lovers vol 1-3

Dreams

  • Born Dirty

    Fiddling with my balls, galaxies merge like two lovers drunk on rum and Turkish coffee. Then comes exhaustion. A sorta fugue state delivering me to a place where the picking hands of modern life are no more than blades of grass beneath my dancing left feet. Sleep is my favourite thing. So is the creation Read more

  • Female Form

    The evenings are made for spaghetti and meatballs. Red skies that shimmer like blood and stars as juicy as a cosmic tit belonging to some long-forgotten god birthed on the shores of a time we will never know. Breathing in, I taste memories of greasy fingers around tightened throats. The smell of Autumn in my Read more

  • Whale Blood

    At four in the morning, the lines disappear. There’s indistinct radio chatter. Conversations circling my head like cartoon birds. I’m somewhere, but don’t know where. On a dot of dust floating through space, but also in her arms, on a rainy day where the streets flood and the bones from my past rise until they Read more

  • Mirror

    In the mirror, I contemplate my limbs. If I were a woman, I’d be a Walter Sickert nude. All crude and ready for the knife. Y’know he was Jack the Ripper, right? I read it in a magazine. If I tuck my junk between my legs, I look just like Buffalo Bill from Silence of Read more

  • Days Flicker

    The days flicker on and off. I squint from a headache. Stood in the rain trying to remember my name, a cat darts between my feet. Black and white. Soaked. There’s a distinct lack of sunlight in the sky which worsens my already worsening mood. The air is light, yet heavy. Dry, like wet sand. Read more

  • Singed Hair

    I dream of an old café that once lingered by the side of the road. I dream of its menu and what it felt like to savour its culinary delights as the rain pissed down on the grey town outside. The café has been gone for years. Non-existent. Full of shadows and mispronounced words as Read more

  • Arc

    The morning brings coffee and the waft of dead cigarettes drifting from crushed beer cans. The day before me is a blur, as is the week, the year, the blah blah blah. The stairs leading to the kitchen are narrow. I stumble and almost trip. In the kitchen, a spider crawls over the toes of Read more

  • Not A Man

    It’s an age of skin fades and genital maintenance. If you don’t agree, they label you less than a man. But that’s okay because I’ve never been a man and never will. Every day, I’m bombarded with adverts telling me I should be trimming my balls and shampooing them with carefully selected products. Not only Read more

  • The Slab

    So many moments in my life hang like clothes on a washing line—they drip and dance, not alive but as real as my mind allows them to be. In the garden, I transition from a child into a dying man in the time it takes a leaf to fall to the ground. The leaf is Read more

  • Upstream Colour

    As my fingers run through the grass, the soil beneath sings a quiet song. Although I can’t see her, I know she’s nearby. I taste the palpitations of her giddy heart in the scorching summer air and sense her sorrow deep in the wood of the trees. Her joy overwhelms everything. It’s a burst of Read more