CONTENT NOTE: Sexual content, profanity

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Nick Forbes | Issue 11, Summer 2026

Sometimes, you get so close to someone that you come out the other side of them. Sometimes you go so far through them that you see every pulse of their heart from five miles away, through a story you shouldn’t have heard, through the thrum of whalesong. Sometimes, when you step through them, you pull all the good parts with you. Sometimes, when you step through them, you leave all the bad parts of yourself lingering in their orbit—and afterwards, that’s all you can ever see. Every relationship I’ve ever been in has been a net in the river, a dose of black oil, a sack of dead fish on my swaying back. River pollution. Emotional sediment. Wherever I go, I leave something behind.

First time I moved away from home, I got attached at the hip pretty quick to a redhead with a quick tongue. We worked it out, snap. I lived in a spare attic at the time, and we would scramble up that wooden ladder together, choking back silent laughter, before I got my wrists pinned to the bed. Dust flew up. Sheets tangled. Canines on my neck, a smile on the cusp of winter. I remember standing at the skylight with them behind me, bracketed by their arms and the night sky, like a bruise, reaching out for my hand. They reached out, too–and from then on, I was caught in their slipstream. Or maybe they were caught in mine.

When I moved for the second time, water swept through the bottom floor, and we woke with twin gasps in my bed. I’d left the vibrator charging on the floor behind the wardrobe. Some things you just can’t save. We snatched at anything we could see in the swelling tide, anything precious. Bags with laptops, a cheque I hadn’t cashed. Two sailors on a sinking ship, bailing ourselves out just as fast as we let the sea in. The carpet rotted. The landlord didn’t answer.

I moved, a third time. I slept in the redhead’s bed for a week or so, until they started getting edgy. Kitchen’s too small, someone will know. Okay, baby. Moved to a friend’s place, slept in their spare room. Slept a lot. Too much. Drowned in it. Woke up when the summer sun was setting, dark like mixed slush, saturated like the kind of hope I wanted to keep. They came over. ‘Course they did. We kept it quiet. Their hand over my mouth, golden light slanting in through the window, their hair aflame in it. Dancing out for the night, we’d stop by the gas station, mix tiny bottles of vodka with impossible potions from the soda machine. Cherry and blue raspberry. Something green and acidic with a burning, swirling orange. Painted our tongues bright with it. Back down the street. The house was quiet even when we were in it, like a waiting maw, or a tired mother. Go out and play, then. Don’t come crying to me.

Our entanglement was something out of a darker fairy tale. Their earnest face, or a dark shadow above me, linked all the way down to my hands like our silhouettes were stitched. Knotted at the corners. After they laid me down, some twisted creature came to me and made me a contract in spit and cum. Soft breath on my left, two mean little eyes at my right. It’ll run after you all your life, if you don’t have the courage to cut it off.

So I cut it off.

I had never needed a lullaby. I treated myself like a noir detective. Head out for the night. Get a glass or two of something strong, knock it back, bum a smoke. Pace, because this case is one you just can’t crack. Crack it open anyway, like an egg one-handed, like a fridge spilling light across their face, like a pair of cuffs, like a heart. The second year rolled around, and the redhead moved in with me.

My signature scrawled in the dark. Contracts, I remembered.

I slept in the bottom-most room. They were king of the castle; I, the dirty rascal. Every container I’m slotted into, I slough and pour and slosh to fill it. It always ends the same way. I swirl with sand and grime and ring tabs and plastic. They stood like a fish tank, like a scuba diver, like a statue pushed into the ocean. They held my form like a plastic bag, like a carnival fish, like scum in the water. I made room. I rested in the gutter, wallowing in my grime, in my silted bedsheets. I watched summer beat against the curtains. It was only sometimes that we made the pilgrimage to their high ground, an attic room, with its wide-open windows, with its slanted skylight. Back again.

Everything that happened in that year had happened in the miserable after. The story was over, I thought. After I told them I wasn’t happy anymore. After they lay on my chest just to listen to the ribs cracking. After they found me again at the bar, on the stairs, on the street, in the kitchen in the small hours of the morning. Until our knees touched on the sofa and everyone else had left, and I knew everything led right back up the stairs to the top floor. To us in the dark, their mouth still shiny with spit between my thighs, eyes glittering with the kind of reverential lust that was the closest we ever got to love.

Entheogenic worship backed its way into their little ensuite, neck bared. Biting and tearing at each other, rending the flesh, sinking into it, eating out of it, the palm of the hand, the hollow of the neck, the pit of the sternum, the well of the legs. I would droop halfway to dreams before being fished back out. I’d lie slick against the shower wall with the blaring lights on, listening to them wash themselves down with coarse fervour. Masculine, quick. With my eyes half-open, I’d gasp my way back to the surface when they hooked themselves in me. Come on, come on. We shouldn’t, but we will. Oftentimes, they would rub sticky bodywash onto my back, like dates, smelling rich and brown and old-money. The warm water would slip right past us. Strands of their crimson hair choked up the drain. I knew I was wanted, if only when no one else could see it. I knew they wanted something, if only for a few hours.

When fresh desire rolled around, I dripped my way back down the staircase and into my gutters. In the end, my washing out was only cyclical.

Our roiling storm fell to puddles, slipped to sewer drainage. From mountainous rivers, we rushed to creeks, to tributaries, to the wide, flat ocean. I float on my back, thinking of the places I’ve been. I must have lived hundreds of lives under their hand, turning the trick. They must have lived hundreds of lives under mine, turning the tap. Wherever I go, I leave something behind.

But what goes around comes around. I slip from place to place. I wallow, I rest. I find a hold. The tide changes. I find an in. I collapse under my own weight. I crash through the room, sparking up electronics, soddening bills, soaking sock drawers. The new storm comes; it builds me up, builds me up, until I’m bursting, I’m raring to go, I break the dam. I draw myself into something torrential, and flood through the next open door.