There was tea and bread sandwiches and a convection heater that burned masses of energy yet never heated more then two foot around it. Half a foot more then I needed. Three duvets lay together upon the worn white leather sofa I had feet first to the heater so it kept me from dying in the thin walled prison, in the endless conurbation of inner East London. I wanted summer and heat, grass, berries and not worrying about getting home until October. In some summers previous I took to wandering the coasts, stealing passage on some private train to Brighton. Then to walk the coast, all the way to Bristol, via Penzance. Then another train home, in time to avoid the never ending rain and hatefulness of Winter.

I took you with me once, between the sea and the ground we covered, there was no dire lack of sustenance or care. If it rained, it rained, shelter was found...there was no problems of the governmental politics to consider, and there was no need to call back home...no-one cared. Throughout that last great journey every night we had to cleave to each other, for safety and enough reassurance to sleep. Not to mention the loving warmth...something that now only remains as a memory.

You died that winter, and this past year has crushed my hopes forever, all is only survival and lackluster compassion against all the pain of this lie, community of foxes, wolves and sheep. You were one of those rare people amongst the livestock and scavengers, you had a conscience in your acts, as opposed to self-aggrandizing diatribes we were forced to listen to in the endless council chamber. Just to acknowledge how filthy and flawed we truly are, made you more human, and at once more Godly then anyone I ever before or since have seen.

I slept and awoke to another day. The sun cast it's burning power through the window and came to rest upon my face, head aching, transferred pain from a body wrecked with insomniac sleep on a couch, I moved. To the floor I saw your picture smashed in it's frame, and the glass upon the carpet where my feet still in shoes crunched within the carpet.

You can't smash a memory, but, you can smash yourself with a memory. Everything about you came back burying me like a skip of bricks back into the folds of the three duvets. Some hours later I awoke, better, and began to pack my clothes into supermarket carrier bags. I took the duvet's and wrapped them so tightly, with strong sting they became a raft of warmth to be carried upon my back. Like a hunchback with multiple plastic bumps I squeezed out of that room for the last time, and grabbed the only good kitchen knife we had...and left that place in East London forever.

I walked to the railway station through the city, fingering the knife in my pocket, the deep pocket that went on throughout my coat lining where good things were held that others couldn't share in their particular meaning. From Hackney's thrice promised land, to Bethnal Green. Through to Whitechapel down to the river, avoiding the roadblocks of the illuminates central ground in the towering greyness of the City of London. Then a final slow hour meandering along the bank of the South Thames, after crossing Southwark bridge...to find the river stinking with death and tingling with waves of disease. Hoping for Waterloo, but sadly finding it fortified, far too much by shiny bureaucrats, and murderous government enforcers.

It permitted no ingress, the trains were viewable yet unobtainable, filled with swine -the richest and most favoured, being ushered into the doors, each platform like a long finger of congruent humanity, well dressed, well fed, well loved. Like we all deserved, but no-one truly attained...or at least, no-one whom I knew of in the East. Hope remained in Clapham Junction, more passable, less barriers and checkpoints, and at least the outside chance of grabbing onto the train as it went through the dangerous rails that were frequently vandalized, and hence made the train slow to 20 miles per hour through the conurbations of Southern London.

It was entirely too hot now, baking sun following a day typical of winter. Inclemency is the way of English weather, but sweat lubricated every footstep, and saturated every fiber of the few clothes I wore... Flies tried to steal this moisture from me as I made my way unknowingly, only guided by keeping the sun on my left, and trusting in the few un-smashed high-up roadsigns showing the changing of the areas postcode as I passed through. It was certainly spring now, though it felt hotter then summer, but it was a dead heat, not bringing life, only certifying the probability of coming death.

Suddenly came a light rain on the baking warmth, I was wondering. when for blossom, when would it come...the earth gives no more, fire everlasting, consuming itself, water flows, not as you'd know, corrupted and flowing with filth, the wind itself having no bite or life, it just slowly moves across you like the hands of a lover too long lingering. I found that train, and hid inside it, riding with the loads of aggregate toward the coast. Facing the poisoned sky, moving sedately above I reached inside that endless coat pocket and found that only good picture of you I ever held, liberated from the smashed glass of the morning, in that place I could never return.

I looked at that image and wondered on those lips which had long before kissed away any of my stupid melancholic concerns, those lips now burned and gone, converted to ash. The final crime, I ripped you up, a thousand fine pieces of photographic paper, floating off my hand onto the tracks behind...like your ashes, scattered, everywhere and nowhere at once. There could be no going back now. This was my end... somewhere on the south coast, to be corroded and dissolved forever by salt water, no trace for the government to give me my final indignity. The tree like skeletons of blossom's promise at the side of the tracks somehow proved to me that the wellspring of life eternal had finally run dry...somewhat too soon. It was my own fault along with everyone else, at least in some pathetic small and token way, I was en-route to atone for my part in it all. In sighing breath as barren countryside opened up beyond the railway crossing of the M25 I mouthed into the air rushing over head: “Goodbye London...Goodbye Life...Goodbye Love.”