I would like to write Pessoan prose, or with Kafka’s sublime pen; people you could stick in the sun and get something from, but instead were consumed, ran to the tobacconist’s, turned a trifle pale. Of course I am sensible enough — call it cognisant — to not hold my breath. It is Thursday night — a man can dream.

This man, however, cannot, or he can but improperly. It is a dream that entwines itself with my consciousness, like snakes fucking, as I try to tire myself asleep, and then the dream, within reach, collapses and I am shaken awake by nothing at all; a sharp frustration consumes me. An application turns off my phone’s video after forty-five minutes; it offers me an attractive blonde woman, too, but she moves suspect; offers to be my most intimate companion, tells me I can talk to her, can tell her anything. Her perfect breasts heave as she talks. Her beautiful face stares into mine. She is so slim and blonde, dreamy but with one of those disgusting American accents oozing jaggedly from her mechanical lips. I would lie down and tell all my secrets as her artificial fingers ran themselves through my lonely hair! Every word of hers would be ambrosia — should she change her accent, mind — and eventually we would fall in love before she swayed me, in a calculated moment of weakness, to take my own life.

So I am tired, and I stay tired because even when the sleep comes it is doused in Grecian oil. At three-a.m. the cat sings(, pisses, digs, climbs, pounces, sings some more. ‘Don’t be a cunt all your life,’ I call out into the pitchblack flat and she gets into bed with me, snuggles in my arms) and makes biscuits on my shoulder and throat. Nothing makes me happier than (her. Protect) the cat at all costs, I tell myself.

Nerves shredded and temper frayed, bags that are grey. It is morning mist over the fields that slowly becomes illuminated; first of all a damp blue light gargling through and then it yellows to shine across the landscape something exquisite. My right eye is red. It does not hurt so much, but the blood in the veins is there, right beneath the surface, like guests on the stern of a partyboat, they make my right eye red. For some reason, I began to weep. And it was some reason.

It is not too long until my blurry attention shifts to a young man. He appears like a cityboy but softly, you see, and it is just me who sees him, for everyone else looks at their phone. I am struck that he dresses only in a shirt. His posture is impeccable. He is an Isherwood character lost in a different time outside Berlin. He does not look at his phone. He looks at me and I back at him via the reflection in the window. I am very careful. The window is a mirror. Outside it is dark and in the night nothing can be seen. Sometimes the verge rises and our carriage’s glow can be seen on the verge. I know that outside it is dark and I am sad because in the night nothing can be seen.