By T. K. Howell
Meet me under the railway bridge when the street lights flicker into life and we’ll head into the city and test the give of the night. I know this club with a light-up floor and a bass that thumps and thrums right through your chest.
Let’s catch the train and when we land on the street, we’ll run untethered. Hold my hand as we bounce up to the bar and drop our first drink in a heartbeat. We’ll feel the kinetic charge of so many people with nothing on their minds but finding their own kind of fun.
Because tonight will be different.
Tonight we will drink the right drinks in the right measures and we’ll stay riding the crest of the buzz for hours and hours.
Tonight we will fly from bar to bar on winged heels and the press of people will magically open up. The barman will see us first and the drinks won’t be watered and the music will be so loud that we’ll communicate entirely in kung-fu dance moves
Tonight, we won’t bump into your ex, the one with the long blonde hair and dimples. She won’t tell you you’re a piece of shit and that she’s moved on to better things and that I look like trash, and I won’t care that she’s right and that she’s cuter than I am. And I’ll believe you when you tell me she’s not.
Tonight, you will pull me into a dark corner of the club and we will kiss until our jaws ache and our lips are raw. We will go back to your flat and nurse our hangovers from your bed until it’s Sunday night and we realise we haven’t washed, haven’t dressed, haven’t eaten for thirty-two hours.
Tonight we won’t run out of money before midnight and the pills won’t be duds.
Tonight we will see friends we’ve not seen for years and together we will unscrew the cap on the lightning we bottled way back when.
Tonight I won’t fall in the street and rip my tights, pulling pieces of gravel out of my red-raw knees while people laugh. You won’t have to put my arm over your shoulder and help me onto the bus. You won’t sigh and shake your head.
Tonight we will be the febrile energy locked up in the first third of a vodka bottle.
Tonight no one will pick a fight with us because they’ve had a skinful and they don’t like the way we kiss.
Tonight, no one in this shit-heap town will tell us there should be laws against our kind of love.
Tonight you will be the song in my soul, as always.
Tonight will be different.
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T. K. Howell is a writer living on the banks of the Thames. When not writing, he manages ancient oak woodlands and tends to trees that are older than most countries. His writing is often inspired by mythology and folklore and can be found at various genre and literary spaces including Lucent Dreaming, Mystery Magazine, Firewords and Indie Bites.