Nothing feels quite like that boney hand, holding down your face in sheets like an evil little shit that holds their sibling down below the water. The hand scratches against your face, as the duvet, familiar and weathered, incubates your perfectly comfortable little atmosphere. You really could spend hours there, floating in and out the foetal free fall of sleep. Maybe you’re supposed to spend all day and night tucked up. But hearing fine rain tickling the window, twisting round, bouncing up and down to look out. You think out loud, “Ok, fuck it looks grim out”. It looks the type of day to ruin your hair. It looks like the type to ruin your coat. The type of day to ruin your day. You coil yoursel into a ball then stretch, peel yourself off, duvet still around like a metal sheen of warmth. Again, you look out the window.

The fine rain wafts down, that icy breeze that stings you in the face so quick. You close the window. The scene outside is a classic establishing shot. There are cars, people walking by. Bins and doors and that sort of thing, but the harder you look the harder it is to stop seeing.

You see a man, his hands on hips and eyes glassed over, mind some other where. You see one of the cars has lines of screechy paint, been etched away by poison keys of a disillusioned ex. It’s tyres are flat and sticking to the curb. Who knows what kind of shoving it’ll take to get it moving. You see a vacuum withering away, its cables leaking onto the step, looking for someone to take it away. You see a pizza box that sits in the gutter, with a guitar and a blonde wig. You see a flag holding on to a flagpole by fingernail and friction. You see a latrine leaking onto the pavement. You see a dustbin on fire. You see wild foxes pick apart a skeleton of unrecognisable bones. You see bodies intertwined as frames of metal. You see statements of hate carved in blood on walls built from history and lust. You see goblins sitting in corners counting money. You think to yourself, what a pity. The sun was supposed to get out today. You see pairs of sunglasses and facemasks wading through the dirge banging pots and panlids as they glide on by to their acres of well-weeded patios. You see hearts bleeding out into the ice, leaving red trails in the white that blend together, burning the glacier crimson. You think to yourself, that’s funny, I can’t see the bleeding any more. You hear a waterfall in the distance, and ignore the sky and think “Oh, that must be where all this rain’s coming from”. You see a canon go off on one side of the street and its operator looks oh so shocked when the other side fires one back. You sniff. There’s hell on the air, and it smells so sweet.

It really does look cold out there, you think to yourself. I think I have to get out of bed.