I Swear That Loneliness Can Let You Love More Things, More

I want to Amen everything ever: the tiny snore-shivers of a tinier kitty, the tenderness of Dad’s wheelchair lit by outside streetlight as we sang the chorus to Senses Working Overtime by XTC in a Bristolian accent, the sixteen-year-old held more by shitty post-hardcore songs than their family.

In honour of near-enough honesty, the language pulsing like a city through every one of us, and mostly, and always, because love, and loneliness, and the aliveness of it all.

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1AM and light wheeze post-Bar One smoking area because even asthma wants to party tonight. I loop ‘Got My Brandy, Got My Beats’ by Kano through way big headphones, veer up Burton Road on foot, the night of my brother’s wedding.

Life is on the brink. All mine is in the ink, Kano says, urgent as an exclamation mark.

He’s getting over someone. A ghost that co-writes songs like this one: made for quiet afterparty’s when it’s just you and the looking-away furniture.

I am both surging with loneliness and set stupidly alight with love.

That dance-less-discussed. The beautiful problem of being able to weep as easily for joy as grief. In the hierarchy of my heart, every feeling jostles for the same microphone.

O people I have loved, failed, lost. Mistake-strewn streets. Trying too hard all-nighters.

Shout out to the desire to fall in love super passionately versus the gorgeous slow-build, the just (as my brother said in his speech) enjoying being around each other, hanging out but forever.

The traffic rare and sudden as I trudge. The sky starless and too huge to believe in.

Today was about immediate, tangible closeness you can shoulder-touch, spin on a dancefloor, say yes to whatever mad weird album recommendation they swore you should armour your playlist with before dawn.

Someone, definitely high, but not definitely on life, asks me how much my suit cost.

Kano fades into bassline.

Also, what is UP with Derby on a Saturday night, he says. And do I know there is a glowstick sticking out of my front pocket?

I say, for no reason at all, what a time to be alive, man. He shakes his head. So, you got it from Matalan, or what? Tell me straight, bro.

A bomb, probably, explodes and ends an entire village.

Someone loses a staring contest with God and reaches for the bottle.

What is true: this guy, if pushed, could want to hug me, punch me, kill me, or just genuinely needs a new suit and for what? His own incoming wedding? His Dad’s funeral?

For every image of tenderness, another of violence.

At the wedding, tears get everywhere, everyone giving so much of an authentic shit about everyone, that phones became lonely for touch, the view outside windows aches for eyes.

I swear, too, those same tears can also fall, hours later, from the people, places, experiences least deserving of love .

Especially if you feel like one yourself.

It has been a journey to embrace the way such an unrelenting capacity to feel enhances and complicates my life.

That wholeness can be a lot.

But it’s mine.

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