No man is all, so, ipso, they were nothing.

"There must have been some reason for getting into a situation where there was nothing to do but be final and obvious. Probably it was because I was too intense with one boy after another. That same horror came with them which comes when the paraphernalia of existences whooshes away and there is just light and dark, night and day, without all the physical quirks and warts and knobby knuckles that make the fabric of existence: either way, they were all or nothing. No man is all, so, ipso, they were nothing. That should not be" - Sylvia Plath

New York (from the sidelines)

"She listened, as if she were an emigrant hearing her homeland's language for a brief while." - Ayn Rand

I am tracing the idea of New York with my index finger. It follows the broken clock and hazy mirror, until it reaches the edge of my bedroom door. The paint is flaking off in all the wrong places, and as I damn my non-responsive real estate agent to hell, I smile at the idea of New York.

New York burns like a lynching. It explodes in my backyard (sepia-coloured, of course). It sets itself off like a warning - a self-indulgent, overly protective burning mass so warm that it melts my winter heart.

It reminds me of a flaming sea, and I sit on the shore, arms around huddled knees, waiting for it to come home.

I know so little about the places I've been. The places I've been only teach me about myself. I read Rimbaud and Kundera and then find torn pieces of paper to write the lines that resonate as loudly as a church bell.

In this place I am Rimbaud and Jonathan Safran Foer and Plato and Kundera and Murakami and Baglione and Plath. In this place I am old shards of paper, covered in treacle-coloured mess and peeling at the edges. In this place I take the detritus of my life and make it magic.

In this place I come to know what I want.

I want to wake up with a glorious red wine induced hangover, fists unclenched, and have "i love you's" scrawled across the alabaster skin of my palm.

I want to drink luke warm, stiff, melanin-coloured coffee, served in stained yellow tea cups and served to me by a woman double my age.

I want hair the colour of "ripe orange rind" (Ayn Rand)

I want to swim in a bowl of molasses, and I want my convictions to be as strong and as binding.