These sick streets are the ones I dance through slow, the ones where I rest my bloodied skull to rest. I met her on a summer evening, dehydrated and sick of the sun. She took my hand and took my soul, before leaving me dead on arrival. Not just a step away, but a mile away from my reality.

It took me a year to stare into her eyes, not because of what I could see, but what I knew I’d see. Time holds a tight grasp on this street, a day is a year, a year several lifetimes. I often wonder what has happened to each of those that live along the street, if their lives feel as long as mine. If they gawk and stare at me through their golden shutters while sipping their golden wine.

I believe the very tarmac has eyes. That with each foot I press to the cold grey street, an eyelid flutters open just as I take another step. Memorising each line and crease, a snapshot of my vulnerability. My toes dig into the eyeball, blinding it permanently.

She doesn’t walk down these streets with me. No sound is murmured here, except the call of old crows. Emaciated and desperate, they like to claw at me, clutching on my fools gold necklace rendering me breathless. I wonder how far their desperation will go, and how long until they turn their talons to one another. I am no pacifist, years of hunger gnarl my bones and thin my hair. The only hand stopping my fist from smashing the mirror is hers.

The noose grows ever tighter, nature herself pulling at my feet. Try as I may, the potions and chemicals can never freeze time. She grows ever faded, until one day, I cannot even feel her. I could stuff her with roses, but that would not snuff the fire burning in my brain. A lover and an executioner, two bulls running at a blue handkerchief and a pair of gravediggers. That is who I am, who I want to consume, want to kill. I’m so starving. I am on my knees begging to you please, sate the insatiable.

She is dead. Accepting the rotten bones beside me does not love me feels like walking through flames. I wish time was kinder with her gifts. I am left with a moving mattress of maggots, flies buzzing at my tattered windows and a home of decay. All my wine is blood. I may cry into the abyss:

“I did not kill her!”

That it was the one before me. But all is futile.

For one does not need to kill to add to their closet.