She broke my heart; I told her, “Hey if you can find it, you’re welcome to do whatever you want with it,” so when she finally did locate it, she strapped wheels to the side of the thing, and rode it up and down the block, like she was having a parade. 

She painted it up so it looked like a clown-car, like it was wrapped in rainbows, like it were some sort of surrealist exhibition of my emotions, ripped from my chest and put out on display.

She put cat-ears on it, and pinned a little tail to the bottom, so she could pretend it was something soft and loveable, which it was not. 

She played with my heart, treated it like it was a toy, and eventually it broke. Eventually. It fell apart, all the little clockwork gears filling up with coarse beach sand, and the most important, tiny bits, simply getting lost in the wind.

She broke my heart, and I let her.

She said she’d found in a soggy old cardboard box, in the basement of some bar I’d never heard of, deep inside some motel I have have stayed at, two lifetime’s ago. The Do Fall Right Inn. I couldn’t remember when or where I’d last seen it, to be honest. My heart was one of those things I just let slip away one night. Maybe I’d never paid it enough mind. 

You make me think of Johnny Cash singing. You know, something throaty and dry, and wet with the sort of whisky that makes you sad and mean inside. 

You make me think of some mad whore, who just can’t take it anymore, standing on the edge of town in a torn ballroom gown, hands full of steel. Voice calling out full of rage.

Yeah, you make me think, and I say your name, 

No-

No, I say something else instead. I can’t let you see me, not when I’m so tired, not when I’m so scared of falling over.

You make me think of dirt under my feet. Big boot stomping. Horses about to start running wild. A storm is coming, from somewhere real far off, and still that crazy whore is there. She really just can’t take it anymore. She’s armed herself, and she’s set the church on fire.

She’s walking down the street, and she’s taking names. 

And hell follows with her. 

I ask her how she’d define her ability to survive. 

I get nervous up high, on the edge, on the ledge of these great long beasts of cement that reach up into the sky like never-ending tombstones. Sky-scrapers, scraping the sky. 

I stand on the edge, and I feel a sensation take me over, a little like my heart is about to puke up my resolve and most of my legs. 

I stand on the edge, and look a billion moments down the side, at the street down below. She bites her lip and smiles and says something that I can’t make out over the roar of the wind. How am I even standing here? What part of this isn’t madness and suicide? A quick trip the exit at the bottom. The All Exit. 

Yeah, the All Exit. Where everybody gets off.

She takes me up high so we can look down at the clouds that frost the windows of the hundred and sixty-eighth floor. We drink a slow breath of cold air together.

And then we set loose our mechanical hearts.
And we fly. 

Wings to fly means no hands to hold.

Which way you gonna fall?

You want to grab somebody, pull them close to you?

Or do you want to just spread yourself out wide, and escape this place?

Army soldiers in Day-Glo uniforms are on parade in the centre of town; a shining sea of men exploding into a panorama of brilliant tones. Enormous guns shooting fireworks into the clouds.

The end has come. Everybody is dancing.

All the captives have covered their prison-bars with streamers and tinsel and other gaudy decorations. Every man in solitary gets an extra piece of cake!

It’s Armageddon day. The day the clocks shall tick no more.

People take long walks down by the beach, where blood-red flames are turning the oceans into ash. Great winged lizards, like prehistoric bats, hover at high altitudes, only occasionally swooping down to earth to devour a child or two.

The end is here. Put on something nice, and come outside.

There’s whole crowds, setting themselves on fire, combusting like beautiful skies full of stars, like nighttime’s subtle sunshine twinkling back at itself. They’re pouring gasoline on all their worries, gasoline on all their bodies. Everybody sings when they’re on fire.

The end is now. And we’re rushing up to meet it. 

“She wasn’t a whore, she was an artist, and there’s a difference in there, if you know anything about the creative process.” She’s talking about her mother again, using terms that were designed to make other people a little less comfortable.

I am trapped here on earth, with you. You, the person reading this; this is my letter for you to find. Find it and make it your own. Own this idea, and learn to live with it. It is only going to get more complicated from here. Here you go again then, look it in the eye.

Somewhere, I can feel my spaceship burning. I can feel a tether growing from my neck to this world. I can feel myself losing my chance to get loose, to slip away, to move on from all these broken little people and their fractured ideals.

I’m trapped here, with you. It’s like a paradise, except for the setting. Yeah, we’re setting ourselves up to fall, right here. Tumble and fall.

I thought, being here, with you, like this, there’d be nowhere lower to go.

Imagine my surprise to see the sky falling even higher up into the abyss above and beyond.