The glare from that yellow orb in the sky stings my eyes as I shield them – it’s too light – it’s too late… Oh yeah, show yourself now; now when the last light blinked out in my heart and all hope is gone. Thanks, nice of you to turn up.

What took you so long? Oh, wait – I get it – you were banking on me giving up before now, right? You laid all of your tattered cards on the table and you were setting your steely features with your poker face, no giveaways here, eh? Read ’em and weep, loser. Well I lost alright – lost everything I had on one crazy ride to hell that you made me take. Helter Skelter hell.

And to think, I fucking trusted you. Ha! If I shake my head any harder, it’ll fall off – a bit like your game face did once you realised you’d won. Player.

I saw it, I saw you: a beacon in the gloom, waving me in, guiding me home and to what? To this. To the false haven of hope. To an eternal pit of colourless tar where sinister tides and black hearts pulse and beat without feeling the thud. Thanks for that – friend.

I wonder in this Wonderland that you make me walk through, how come they all float down here?  Why don’t they sink? Sink like my heart does every time I hear the whisper of your fetid breath blowing its way down these concrete streets; sink like the stone that resides in your chest where your fulcrum used to be and sink to the bottom of this inky black swimming pool you call the sea – with the gravity of what you did, dangling around your ankles as a dead weight. This weight isn’t worth it. You’re not worth it and yet, still you wait…

I’ll ask you again? What are you waiting for? Is it this? Do you think you’ll finally get your filthy, crimson-stained hands on my soul?

You do make me smile. Granted, it’s no smile of happiness, it doesn’t reach my eyes or burst my heart, but it kinda makes a mess of my face once in a while. You see, there’s no soul to take. That ride left long ago. Closed up for the season. Wrapped in tarps and silent. Dead for another winter – dead forever, maybe?

So there you go, kid. Laugh all you like. Chortle along with the funny man on the prom and the raven-haired boy who’s just had his chips nicked by a seagull. It won’t last. It’ll pass by in a hazy summer blur, just like your life does – swaying fields of gold dancing in the warm wind and rainbow motes stealing that last shaft of sunlight. You wanted that, right? You wanted to see one more blood-red sky before you plunged to the bottom didn’t you?

Sorry – we don’t always get what we wish for. I told you. Never trust the summer, son. Because winter is always coming…