Iain McLean

Love Toxic Iain McLean

As the syrupy liquid fills the glass it sparkles and dances in a thousand crystal triangles of winter, washed and blended gold and jasmine. I drink the ice-cold albariño, refill my glass and go back to the white sofa. Her shadow passes before me, swiping the room to before and after. G fills her glass, sits on the floor and looks at me through those spectral stone washed eyes I fell for eight years ago. Since then, I have come to know her manners for each of her personalities, her quick-fire contrariety, her swift intellect and her sensual beauty. G does not control her impulses or addictions. She is strong enough to withstand what life throws at her but quick to fold when her heart is empty. Her scampish smile can dazzle, but when she is troubled, as if pursued by life's unseen jailer, her eyes glare and she will scream: "Make me feel!"; her vibrant hair swishing lifelessly forward to cover her face, she invokes her own mercurial vanishing trick and is gone. When I am in love, I do not know what it is only what it does. Escape and risk become thrilling needs. Perfect union creates life-affirming growth and converts responsibility and routine into a burden for others. Intense pleasure and pain happen at every moment, replacing the need to think of the finite and the infinite. From such passion the sanctuary of the womb is regained and love that is unbreakable has as its symbol virgin birth. Eroticism acts "like a paralyzing venom distributed through the affections into the very appetites" (Shelley). Beating cancer had raised my emotional sensitivity. To hold on, to stay the course, G became my muse. Always a thing of beauty, the modern muse is thrilling and terrifying, traumatic and able to traumatise; superbly judgmental and deplorably open to being judged. I could not have written this without her glorious, shape-shifting ways, nor been left so exposed. More than a passing reminder of our own fragility, this collection grants the reader a glimpse into the integrity and declivity in life and of love toxic. I hope it makes you feel.