There’s music in that pub, hidden in the cobbled alleyway in Kings Cross. On this rainy December night, a girl in red tights sings, we drink Guinness on the pavement, and I fold myself in half when I laugh.
I drink more than I can afford, I tell my friends my dark, damp secrets and then we cheers, looking up to the injured sky, impaled by the glass building where my old love used to live. A rat disappears into the gutter.
The sadness latches onto my ankle as soon as I turn the corner in St Pancras station to catch my train home. The wind is strong and whistling through my insides; a more subtle kind of music, played on a hollow instrument.
I remember taking my friends’ hands, dipping a toothpick in wax from the sides of a burning candle, and, while the girl in the red tights sang, I wrote my initials on their skin. It must have felt like relief: so warm and so temporary
I’m Natalia- a 24 year old final year student of Russian at UCL. I’ve always loved writing poetry and have almost completed my first novel- a psychological horror set in London.