I didn’t understand that when you make love, you actually do MAKE love. Stir things. Affect each other. The breath that escapes from me is dazzled. He breathes it in with a gasp.

I imagine horses in the engine, their manes flying, their breaths steaming, their nostrils flaring as they gallop.

The inside of the door is glossy white. A total re-paint. I touch it with my fingers, but it stays the same. It’s so bright it makes the room waver at the edges. Every few years we disappear.

She breathed her mantra – fire, earth, water, air – and told herself that the elements were older and stronger than any human and that these girls were insignificant, and one day they’d all be dust.

It’s utterly beautiful not to know my own edges.

Like a tree losing its leaves. I forget even the thing I was thinking.

I said I wouldn’t leave her.

It’s as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me.

All I know is that I have two choices – stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.

Instructions for Adam Look after no one except yourself. Go to university and make lots of friends and get drunk. Forget your door keyes. Laugh. Eat pot-noodles for breakfast. Miss lectures. Be irresponsible.