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I.

Keep my head down and push forward - that was my mantra for as long as I remember. I've never known towards what I was pushing but that undefined goal made the embers of hope slowly smolder deep inside of me. I'd never admit it out loud because hope was for fools, but who were people if not fools, desperately searching for their place under the sun?

Too many times I've caught myself thinking that I was about to become another number in the statistics of people killed on London's streets. In some way, it felt appropriate - I was never important enough, so I didn't count on the fact that they'd announce my name on the news. No, there would be a brief mention of an abused body recovered from the ditch before the news anchor would carry on with scaremongering and the dangerous side of London.

After such encounters, I shrink into myself and disappear, hiding behind concrete walls of a sanctuary I've created for myself in the middle of Hackney that I've compared to a viper's nest too many times in my head. Other nights, I siphon feelings off people and convert them into something I can use - recycle their intention and make it something mine. It's easier to copy and push my true self to the side because then I can plaster a fake smile, watch men with dead eyes and pretend that their jokes are funny.

I continuously tempt fate, not because of cheap thrills that I'm trying to chase, but out of a necessity. When you've been dealt a bad hand, you'd try to change your cards, but what if I'm stuck in a loop? That's what I've always thought until everything changed one night.

So, imagine my surprise when instead of fleeing, I've found myself in a company of a stranger. Alex. Imagine the shock to my system when I didn't want to retreat into myself, afraid what my solitude would do to me. Imagine the astonishment when I talked so much, I drowned out my own heartbeat.

And he was there to listen.