by Joe Stretch
Can I be the hero? Of course not.
I have thoughts so dark your spying peepers can’t register them, relying as your eyes do on the presence of slim light. Chinks of hope. Tragic, biological poetry. Do I wish I’d been aborted? Would it have been better to have trickled on to the bathroom floor as a beatless collection of little guts and early versions of limbs? Well, it’s the obvious question, surely. Sniff sniff sniff. How did I become such a weakling? Do I wish I wasn’t here? Well, compared to this . . . no, I can’t answer. But these awful bright walls. Paint – who invented it? I hope someone forgave them.
Rebecca, Frank, Carly, Steve, Johnny. Let me say their names one last time. Justin. I won’t write again, I’m tired of it. I’ll refuse to write and do something stupid instead. When you read this I’ll probably be dead, or, better still, I’ll be out of here. I’ll make my brain explode and I’ll blow out the cell wall and run off to meet you, buy you a drink and woo you with a well-turned phrase. But who’s you? Don’t ask me.
There’s a terrible whiff of the end to all this, I can see it coming at me from down the page. I want to love, I wish I could be a part of things. No, forget I ever said that; it was a lie. But make the most of yourself! Oh, definitely forget I said that. Just imagine me laughing out loud, that’s how I imagine you.
If I could see a panoramic landscape, then the sun would be setting on it. Certainly, if I could love, then my lover would be dead, rigid in my arms. If I could fight, then the battle would now be won, or lost in the extreme. And, if I believed in human endeavour, then I promise someone would be doing something exceptional and hopeful by now.
But instead.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my family and my friends. Especially, Tony Weymouth, Nicholas Royle, Joe Cross, Kristian Scott, Lív Lamhauge, Laura Marsden, Edward Evans, Gareth Buckell and Jude McWilliams. Also, to John Saddler and Beth Coates.
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Epub ISBN: 9781407013923
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Published by Vintage 2008
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Copyright © Joe Stretch 2007
Joe Stretch has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental. Whilst every effort has been made to obtain permission from holders of copyright material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any further editions.
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099515968