“Downtown,” she’d said, the word clipped and hurried.
But the truth, etched in the tremor of her voice,
was the space behind the train station.
There, amidst the forgotten echoes of departures and arrivals,
a different kind of rendezvous awaited.
The air hung heavy with the tang of metal
and the musky scent of discarded dreams,
a fitting backdrop for the news she carried.

Tears welled in her eyes,
glistening like misplaced diamonds in the fading light.
Her daughter, she’d confessed,
a revelation that shattered the carefully constructed facade I’d known.
My question, a clumsy attempt to bridge the chasm
that had opened between us, hung heavy in the air.
“Did you speak to her?” it tumbled out, the “her” left purposely vague,
the vein of desperation in my voice betraying my flimsy pretence of nonchalance.

The foolishness of it all washed over me.
Years had passed, a lifetime etched in unspoken words and the slow,
steady erosion of connection.
My own sins, a tangled web spun from choices and regrets,
mirrored in the storm brewing behind her eyes.

And then, as if by unspoken agreement, the dam broke.
Tears, raw and unadulterated, streamed down both our faces.
The weight of the unspoken, the burden of lost years,
dissolved in the cleansing rain of shared grief.
We sought refuge in a dimly lit bar, a haven for the weary and lost.
The air, thick with smoke and the murmurs of strangers,
provided a strange sense of solace.

I did many mistakes,
I lived like a whirlwind of passion
a tornado of missteps
and a tempest  of failures.

Haven’t exactly followed a well-lit path,
more like a series of flickering flames
each igniting a new path that seemed electrifying
to lead me in the into dark tunnels
with an unsettling lack of exit signs.

Yet I manage somehow to stand, broken,
a testament to the stubborn resilience
that keeps propelling me forward,
even if it’s towards another passionate mistake.

The scars are there, etched deep failed ventures
driven by a burning desire that ultimately fizzled,
affairs that imploded disgruntled
under the weight of misplaced fervour.

Each wrong turn stung,
leaving me in the cold embrace of disappointment.
The darkness felt suffocating,
the air thick with the weight of “what ifs.”

I sift through the wreckage,
dissecting the choices lead me astray.
Was it the passion itself that was flawed,
or the way I navigated it?

Rain lashed against the plastic cover,
a relentless counterpoint to the gold of the sun,
the kind of day that mirrored the mayhem inside me
a tempestuous mix of despair and fleeting hope.

There, across a chipped table at the damp park, sat her.
Tears, glistening like shattered diamonds,
traced paths down her porcelain cheeks.
my insides twisted with a pang of something akin to shame,
a foreign feeling in the wasteland of my mind.
My own thoughts were a polluted river,
choked with the debris of self-pity and denial.

“Poison,” she rasped, her voice a mere whisper lost in the drumming rain.
“Coursing through my veins, a sweet, seductive melody promising oblivion.”
Her eyes, the colour of a stormy sky, locked with mine.
A flicker of recognition, or perhaps a shared understanding
of the abyss we both teetered on the edge of.

I scoffed, a dry, hollow sound.
“Polluting the last dregs of my brain with cheap aquavit,” I muttered,
watching the world through the transparent liquid.
The truth was far more damning
I was trying to drown the reminiscences, the doubts,
the suffocating emptiness, the wishful end.

“Good day,” she said, her voice barely audible yet strangely resolute.
A ghost of a smile played on her lips.
It wasn’t a joyous smile, not by a long shot.
It was the bitter grin of someone who
had stared into the abyss and found a twisted amusement there,
a dark echo of the despair that gnawed at my own soul.

We both laughed, a harsh, brittle sound,
that scraped against the already frayed edges of the day.
My laughter was a bitter cocktail of self-loathing and regret.
Hers, a sour note laced with a desperate defiance.
It was a symphony of broken things,
a duet sung by two lost souls clinging to the wreckage of their lives.

To Olof Palme,
leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party
from 1969 until his assassination in 1986.

Lars, remember those nights in the park,
huddled beneath the stars,
fists clenched against a world
rigged against the powerless?
Remember Lars?
Please, don’t laugh Lars.

We were young then, Lars,
naive maybe, but we believed
and change was possible.
We fought against the tide, Lars,
against the rising hate,
the widening chasms,
the fascists and the nazis.

We thought the older generation,
steeped in their apathy, were a dead end.
We were going to be different.
That’s what we thought, Lars,
Remember Lars?
Please, don’t laugh Lars.

Look at them now, Lars.
The very ones we swore to fight against,
draped in the flag of democracy they mock.
They call themselves champions of the people,
Remember Lars?
Please, don’t laugh Lars.

The very monsters we railed against, Lars,
parade inside the parliament,
 trophies of power in hand,
oblivious to the struggle below.
all kinds of hysteria their shield.

And Lars, be careful.
Don’t let their eye catch you
They don’t understand what being human means,
dissent is a disease,
a threat to their gilded cage.
do you remember Olof, Lars?
Please, don’t cry Lars.

He was sitting there alone in the dark;
the only company the shadows dancing on the wall,
lost kingdoms and neglected Cinderellas
swirled through his mind,
fairy tales that glimmered like distant stars,
forever out of reach.

A familiar ache bloomed in his arm,
a dull throb that signaled another failed attempt.
He squeezed his eyes shut,
willing the borrowed courage,
the fantastical escape,
to take hold of what Malmöhus Slott had left for him.

But the liquid coursing through his veins
held no happily-ever-afters,
only the bitter tang of disappointment,
no charming princes or glass slippers materialized.
Instead, grotesque figures materialized
from the inky blackness,
their laughter echoing in the hollowness of his mind.

He gritted his teeth,
the metallic tang of blood
an unwelcome counterpoint
to the fading dream.

The spike, a constant companion these days,
offered no solace.
It was a cruel reminder of the real world,
a world where magic was a fleeting illusion
and nightmares the harsh truth.

With a sigh, he slumped back,
the echo of his loneliness
a stark contrast to the fantastical
tales that taunted him
from the recesses of his mind,
from Malmöhus Slott,
Malmö castle!

The train hustled over the bridge,
escaping the twisted tower of Malmö,
a fugitive’s exiting all the way
to Copenhagen’s mermaid.
I watched it recede, red taillights disappearing,
another sip from the blood poison.

Beside me he remained silent,
his gaze fixed on the churning sea.
“Another train gone,” I muttered,
“another chance to leave.”
He turned, his eyes glinting in the dying light.
“There wouldn’t be a chance. Not anymore.”

I remembered his words,
spoken years ago on this very spot.
We were just old then, still defiant.
“We’ll go there one day,” I’d vowed,
clutching a vial filled with a vibrant red liquid.
“This town can’t hold us.”

The train’s mournful wail echoed in the distance.
“Times change,” I’d argued,
my voice laced with the bitterness
of years spent drowning sorrows.

He shook his head,
a single tear tracing a path down his pale cheek.
“No, dude. Times are a river, always flowing.
It’s us who build the dams,
who choose to stay stagnant
or let ourselves be carried forward.
We chose the crimson dam.”

He offered a last,
a ghost of a smile.
“Maybe,” he said,
“maybe one day,
we build a new bridge.”

In the silent aftermath months,
where shadows stretch
and memories sway,
a friend, a soulmate, has drifted away,
leaving me with echoes .

Decades weave a tapestry,
threads of joy and misery,
it was the 70s when the first went away
dawned within smokes embrace,
spikes in bruised veins.

Seeking solace, feeling pained,
the world was wild, a spinning top,
we’d rise, we thought
we’d fall, and it never stopped,
we lost ourselves in fleeting lights.

Time marched on, the 90s came,
with passion’s fire, a different flame,
bodies tangled, souls entwined,
in moments brief, we felt divine,
two friends left with the kiss of AIDS

But life shifts, a fickle friend,
brings heartache that we cannot mend,
cancer came with ruthless hand,
a battle neither of us planned.
I survived, you left.

Memories play on fevered minds,
ghostly echoes, faces that never fade,
in dreams, they visit, spectral light,
keep me company through the night.
and I’m so lonely and so afraid.

The 70s haze, the 90s fire,
the 2020s rock and roll,
these moments etched upon my soul.
So here I sit, as twilight falls,
echoes dancing on the walls.

Please sit next to me, she said.
I could do with some company.
It’s the sound of the voice that I miss more
please do talk to me, she begged,
her voice, a dry rasp against the sterile air,
held a tremor that tugged at my heart.

Her fingers, like gnarled branches,
gripped the chipped cup by her bedside.
Her face, etched with the map of a run-down life,
impossibly ancient under the harsh fluorescent lights.
A cough, a dry rasp in the sterile air,
a weathered symphony of time and pain’s embrace.

I’d never saw her before, in this place,
a panorama of buzzing drunken chaos,
she was an island of stillness.
The others, vibrant and noisy, swearing and shouting
were separated from her by an invisible gulf of tears.
In this place, where pity often meant absence,
she was an anomaly.

A strange mix of emotions washed over me,
shame, unease, a flicker of morbid curiosity.
Here she was, perched precariously on the edge of life,
and the spectre of death hung heavy in the air.
It wasn’t a violent demise she feared, but a silent one,
a fading away with no human connection to anchor her.

She didn’t speak again,
her gaze fixed on some unseen point beyond the skylight.
Instead, she raised the bottle to her lips once more,
draining the poisonous amber liquid within.
Each deliberate sip felt like a final act,
a desperate clinging to the so few vestiges of her life.

One night, as you performed
with all the celestial spheres,
a figure emerged from the swirling mist.
This one wasn’t shrouded in despair.
His eyes held a knowing glint,
and a smile played on his lips,
like a half-remembered melody.

“An impressive display,” he said,
his voice a soothing murmur like wind chimes on a deserted beach. 
“But the flame feeds on more than defiance. Does it not yearn for something more?”

You stared, mesmerized. 
“Who are you?” you whispered,
the question catching in your throat.

“A fellow traveller,” he replied, stepping closer.
“One who has danced with both light and shadow.”

He gestured towards the flame on your palm.
“Your fire burns for its own sake,
a beautiful rebellion, but a lonely one. 
Let it touch another heart,
ignite a spark within another soul.
It might just be the sunrise you never expected.”

His words hung heavy in the air,
a challenge and a promise. 
You looked at the faces in the mist,
their yearning mirroring your own. 

A slow smile,
like the first bloom on a barren winter branch,
graced your lips.
You lifted your hand,
the defiant flame hovering between you and the crowd.
This time, the invitation wasn’t one of spectacle, but of connection.

The city lights blurred as we sped through the night.
The woman behind the wheel, her name Malady,
glanced back with a wink.
“Good taste in drivers, huh?” she chuckled.
I grinned, feeling warmth spread through me.

“Where to?” She asked. “The best bourbon in town, I said
“Thought you might be feeling that way,” she said.
“There’s this great little place I know…”
Her voice trailed off as she started the engine, the car humming to life.
“Let’s go quench that bourbon appetite, shall we?”

We pulled up to a bar unlike any I’d seen.
A crooked, neon sign glowed in the shape of a lopsided melon,
casting a cheerful orange hue on the weathered brick facade.
“The Melon Patch?” I questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t knock it till you try it,” Malady winked again,
her smile as infectious as the bar’s quirky sign.
“This is where bourbon dreams come true.”
She shut off the engine.
“Consider it a bonus for mentioning good taste.” 

Intrigued, I paid the fare.
Before I could protest, Malady hopped out,
her heels clicking a happy rhythm on the sidewalk.
“One drink,” she declared, throwing an arm
around my shoulder, “on the house.”

The door of the Melon Patch swung open,
revealing a haze of amber light and the sweet,
heady aroma of aged bourbon.
Stepping inside, a warmth,
both literal and welcoming, washed over me.

This, I had a feeling,
was the start of a night I would soon forgive but never forget.