clinging to the wreckage

Saturday morning and the rain is falling as I sit inside with a coffee and stare out of the window. It’s peaceful, wet and green. It’s beautiful. It’s the weekend that you are back from holiday. We haven’t spoken since that Friday I left for Vigo and we messaged for a few minutes until I lost signal and, just like that, you were gone. Three weeks have passed and the strength and certainty I felt that day have attenuated because I don’t know if your holiday will have caused you to forget me or reject me or hate me. Perhaps you will come back with a strengthened resolve to shut me out and focus on what you have. Alternatively, your interest may have grown and you may come back eager to speak to me. I am excited and terrified. I am happy to know that I will get the chance to communicate with you on some level but I am afraid that it may spell the end when you read the letter I left in your drawer and then see an email from me too. Regardless of the outcome, I need to know. I need

I lie in the dark… well, it is a dim candlelight… and I think of dying. I feel a longing for death… because I see no point in the rest.... why do we go on and go on and grow old and waste away? We struggle on alone and everyone is fighting their own battle in their own space. It’s no crime to go. It’s no crime to make some space. All the drinks in the world can’t make this a happy place and all of the drinks in the world can’t bring you closer. One moment two people are sharing a salad and a fork… the next minute they are in different countries and the memory is starting to fade. And we just move on and move on like we are going through chocolate bars or bottles of beer… some disposable commodity. We are disposable commodities. And tonight I am bleeding. Both physically and metaphorically. I’m falling apart. I suppose I can’t expect anything else considering the last few months. Perhaps one could argue that the last few years have been extreme and that I have take

It only seems like a few minutes ago that the cleaner arrived and found me passed out on the floor. She woke me and was so beautiful that I was confused and wondered who she was. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘ Yo no hablo Inglés’ she replied. ‘Who are you?’ ‘limpiador’ She looked around the apartment in disbelief… it was like a real life scene from one of the ‘Hangover’ films. I saw her looking in horror at the clothes piled on the floor that I had kicked off only a few hours before. I tried to explain that I was dying and that Madrid was to blame but she had no sympathy. With a series of hand gestures I convinced her to come back in thirty minutes. I threw up in the shower and went to work.

Inevitably, they all fade into nothingness in her presence. There must be a queen… an immortal… a goddess and she will claim her throne without challenge. The others plays games and live in fear and paranoia whilst the goddess simply exists in the knowledge of her absolute power. In her strength lies her beauty and, as for the rest of us, there is simple hopelessness. For, in longing for the queen, there is immense pain… but there is an even greater misery in the knowledge that obtaining the queen would only result in being devoured whole, heart and soul. There is no lasting happiness or joy in anything. Immense pleasure burns out rapidly and is replaced with a greater suffering.   There is no escape and our empty search for happiness is ultimately futile.

Formidable in French and not in English I long for you and wish I was in Nantes not in this empty room surrounded by the debris of yesterday and my haunting thoughts thinking of the songs that you gave to me. is there any significance at all? the one person I really don’t believe in is me and so I try to write a letter but it is futile each line stumbles across the page and I imagine the look on your face as you read in horror Formidable I miss you already four more days of seeing you and then we both leave to go our separate ways.

I suppose, when we see an ambulance pull up outside, paramedics rushing from it, we can only feel something akin to relief that it is not for us. But the irony is that I pour a beer and feel like I can’t go on reading this book. It feels more and more like the final chapter, a chapter that is too long, and I don’t even want to know the ending. The silly gossip that exists everywhere drags me down and the questions I’m asked about a person infuriate me; a person I care for deeply regardless of her condition or her behaviour. As for her, a lengthy silence was broken yesterday and this filled me with great delight. It was as if the light had finally returned after a prolonged spell of darkness. We shared tea and tales and songs… ‘we were wonderful… you were wonderful… I was pathetic.’ It’s sad to know that you won’t be around for a few days but it’s not the first time someone I have loved has disappeared into silent retreat. In fact, it is a constantly recurring

Waiting for a stranger in a strange place with a strange smell and the thing that strikes me is human frailness, human weakness... I see no strength in people including myself and I want to reach out to the tragic and console them and cry for all the bad things we've done and seen and have had done to us.             The stranger arrives and looks more beautiful than I remembered. The thoughts of weakness and suffering temporarily depart and we make our way, like young lovers in love, to a restaurant. I feel a sense of amazement that she has come to my part of the city… we’ve only met once and she trusts me enough to come to my area. Her confidence overwhelms me as she speaks out powerfully to everyone and anyone she encounters. She requests things that normally people would not request… two courses at the same time… she is tiny, beautiful, and fierce. She is fourteen years younger than me, speaks three languages, and has travelled all over the world. Four