That morning was the lover's parade. Dead faces turned to my window as they shuffled past, every swan neck knotting to a rouged fist. I laid low. When the last heel had turned into London Road I lit a cigarette and stepped out into the street. From over the way the neighbours' houses screamed at me over moats of bifidus digestivum [bad word]  The hybrid cars winked at me as I stepped closer, [bad word] [bad word] together, labial grilles moistened: willing, waiting. And [bad word] that day was asymmetrical balding; happiness a de-scaled kettle. Dead children in another country were to blame for the riots at the petrol station. Another three pence on super-unleaded. They spared the Costa machine. I laid down in the rotting cardboard by the recycling tub and slid feet first up the side of the tree. Looking up, I watched [bad word] filing past – eyes buffering – sipping foam from the vacuum-formed nipples of their mammary brands: men with no mothers. Mothers with no sons. And out past the emaciated magpies lying dead at the bottom of their Rolex nests I saw her turn into the street, floating seven feet off the ground, haloed by a concentricity of wedding rings and whipping umbilical cords, and as she brought her lips to my ear the tears streamed into my fresh-dyed hairline because she was right. She was so right. How dare anyone anything ever? How dare you “how dare” me like I don't know better?