Cleopatra and Frankenstein

by Coco Mellors

‘Love looks through spectacles that make copper look like gold, poverty like riches, and tears like pearls.” He

‘I promise to love you, protect you, and never steal your worthless shit.’

Lolll

When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.

FRANKKKK

I am lonely, of course. I’m so lonely I could make a map of my loneliness. In my mind it looks like South America, colossal, then petering out to a jagged little tip. Sometimes I’m so lonely I’m not even on that map. Sometimes I’m so lonely I’m the fucking Falklands.

Everyone I know is either more successful or more interesting than me. This realization is nothing new. In fact, it used to feel like everyone I didn’t know was more successful and interesting than me too.

“Movie, melatonin, and masturbation,” she says, tapping out the words on my hand with her finger. “Best night’s sleep you’ll ever have.”

I guess that’s what life should feel like; setting off on a long car ride with all your worries and hopes strapped around you, the people who love you most frantically waving you off as you go.

“And you and I didn’t get that, not because we didn’t deserve it, we just got dealt something else. But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure. Maybe they’re not as shiny or successful as you and I feel we have to be. But it’s not because they’re not interesting. They just don’t feel they have to do the tap dance, you know? They don’t have to prove themselves all the time to be loved. Because they always were.”