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Description
He never shaves.

I can tell from the sound of his voice. It sounds like the rasp you hear when you rub your hand against stubble, like tiny thorns made of hair. It makes me cringe. It makes my stomach clench like an angry fist. It makes my skin try to leap from my flesh; my flesh tries to leap from my skeleton, my skeleton tries to leap from my organs and sprint off into the rotting embrace of the night. My organs try to scatter off into the stratosphere like disjointed balloons full of helium.

He sounds like he smokes a lot. A twenty pack a day. Maybe two. Maybe he even smokes cigars, although he doesn't sound sophisticated enough for that. He sounds like the type of man who wears a denim jacket that is worn at the elbows and smells of dirty water lying like a liquid corpse in the gutter, and jeans with holes in the knees that weren't made like that. He is a man full of holes, like the black holes in space devouring everything around them, and you can't see them because they even steal the light. His shoes are made of mud, and they have holes in them, too.

My heart is a deflated balloon with footprints of mud trampled all over it.

I inhale clean air and exhale his poison. It steals the life from my body. I am so tired that the walls move when I look at them and the people in my posters come to life. His thorny stubble voice is the soundtrack to my existence. It is the antithesis of a lullaby.

He isn't God in the literal sense, but he's God in the universe of my head. He holds the planets in his roughened palm and squeezes the stars between his yellow fingertips, quenching their terminal light as if they were embers dancing on the top of a candle.

His name changes. Sometimes it's Jimmy. Sometimes it is Him, spelled with a capital H because that's the way it goes. Sometimes it is nothing. Mostly it's Jimmy.

He isn't real. They told me he isn't real. But I saw him in real life one night.

He walked past me dressed all in denim, elbows worn and bald. He hadn't shaved. A puppet string of smoke hung suspended over his head and I knew that he was smoking. He probably had a twenty pack in the pocket of his jeans. Maybe he was smoking a cigar. Ghost trails of muddy footprints followed him on the pavement.

He was gone within five seconds, swallowed whole by the crowd.

I went home and listened to Saint Jimmy by Green Day over and over and over until my CD player broke.

Maybe I cried. Maybe I took out my green garden clippers and engraved his name into my thigh as if I was a piece of jewellry belonging to him. Maybe I tugged my hair out in fistfuls and screamed until my lungs shrivelled up like dried fruit. Maybe the scream wasn't a scream but a whisper, a hollow husk of expelled breath, because he stole my voice away.

Maybe I'll see Jimmy again.

Maybe next time he'll kill me like he promised so many times.

Maybe I'll go looking for him.

Maybe.

Description
He never shaves.

I can tell from the sound of his voice. It sounds like the rasp you hear when you rub your hand against stubble, like tiny thorns made of hair. It makes me cringe. It makes my stomach clench like an angry fist. It makes my skin try to leap from my flesh; my flesh tries to leap from my skeleton, my skeleton tries to leap from my organs and sprint off into the rotting embrace of the night. My organs try to scatter off into the stratosphere like disjointed balloons full of helium.

He sounds like he smokes a lot. A twenty pack a day. Maybe two. Maybe he even smokes cigars, although he doesn't sound sophisticated enough for that. He sounds like the type of man who wears a denim jacket that is worn at the elbows and smells of dirty water lying like a liquid corpse in the gutter, and jeans with holes in the knees that weren't made like that. He is a man full of holes, like the black holes in space devouring everything around them, and you can't see them because they even steal the light. His shoes are made of mud, and they have holes in them, too.

My heart is a deflated balloon with footprints of mud trampled all over it.

I inhale clean air and exhale his poison. It steals the life from my body. I am so tired that the walls move when I look at them and the people in my posters come to life. His thorny stubble voice is the soundtrack to my existence. It is the antithesis of a lullaby.

He isn't God in the literal sense, but he's God in the universe of my head. He holds the planets in his roughened palm and squeezes the stars between his yellow fingertips, quenching their terminal light as if they were embers dancing on the top of a candle.

His name changes. Sometimes it's Jimmy. Sometimes it is Him, spelled with a capital H because that's the way it goes. Sometimes it is nothing. Mostly it's Jimmy.

He isn't real. They told me he isn't real. But I saw him in real life one night.

He walked past me dressed all in denim, elbows worn and bald. He hadn't shaved. A puppet string of smoke hung suspended over his head and I knew that he was smoking. He probably had a twenty pack in the pocket of his jeans. Maybe he was smoking a cigar. Ghost trails of muddy footprints followed him on the pavement.

He was gone within five seconds, swallowed whole by the crowd.

I went home and listened to Saint Jimmy by Green Day over and over and over until my CD player broke.

Maybe I cried. Maybe I took out my green garden clippers and engraved his name into my thigh as if I was a piece of jewellry belonging to him. Maybe I tugged my hair out in fistfuls and screamed until my lungs shrivelled up like dried fruit. Maybe the scream wasn't a scream but a whisper, a hollow husk of expelled breath, because he stole my voice away.

Maybe I'll see Jimmy again.

Maybe next time he'll kill me like he promised so many times.

Maybe I'll go looking for him.

Maybe.