Some griefs arrive with sirens.

Others arrive secretly,

wearing the scent of your shirt,

settling beside me

while a vinyl record turns

with that familiar crackle—

each revolution another attempt

to bring you back.

I have learned that memory

has a sound.

It is the needle touching old music.

It is your laughter caught

between one verse and the next.

It is my name

only because it once belonged

inside your mouth.

And yours—

God.

Have I ever told you

how much I loved saying your name?

It felt less like speaking

and more like praying.

No one warned me

that love was a rose.

Everyone speaks of the bloom,

of crimson petals opening

like miracles in spring.

No one tells you

that sometimes

the thorns survive

long after the flower is gone.

I still wear your shirts.

Not because they fit,

but because they remember

the shape of your shoulders.

I still wear your necklace,

black against a black shirt,

as though mourning

could become a uniform.

Sometimes I hear a motorcycle

passing beneath my window,

and my hands instinctively reach

for a waist that no longer exists.

I am still holding onto you

as you ride through a city

that no longer has roads.

Only clouds.

You once told me

that dreams were worth believing.

I believed you.

And then I discovered

what becomes of broken dreams.

They do not disappear.

They wash ashore

on forgotten boulevards,

where lovers wander barefoot,

careful not to bleed

on the shattered glass

of futures they had already named.

If you have never stood

on such a boulevard,

you will not understand.

But one day—

when the universe chooses your house,

your heart,

your impossible hope—

you will.

You will learn

how heavy silence can become.

I still remember

the first time I saw you.

A video call.

Pixels.

A hesitant smile.

Two strangers

pretending not to recognise destiny.

You looked into my eyes,

and before either of us realised it,

my heart had crossed the screen.

No visa.

No permission.

Only surrender.

Then came our first kiss.

How extraordinary

that happiness

can hurt so much.

That night

I wanted the world to end—

not because I wished to die,

but because I could imagine

no tomorrow

higher than that single moment.

You taught me

that dreaming

wasn’t foolish.

When I stood

at the edge of myself,

ready to disappear,

you held my hand

with the quiet certainty

of someone who believed

I was worth saving.

Before you,

life felt like

an endless winter.

After you,

even London

could not feel cold enough

to frighten me.

Do you remember?

I told you

I was leaving.

Not to leave you—

never that—

but to become

someone worthy

of staying beside you.

“I need to get clean,”

I whispered.

“For me.

For us.”

Hope,

I have unearthed,

is the hardest promise

to keep.

Now the record

has stopped spinning.

The tattoo

will never be finished.

The feather

waits for a wind

that has forgotten its name.

The boulevard waits too.

Perhaps it always will.

Sometimes

the lights begin singing

without warning.

I hear them.

Every streetlamp

hums your favourite melody.

Yet I no longer dance.

How could I?

Every step

belongs to the one

who used to lead me.

I no longer sing

unless it is our song.

Even then,

my voice keeps looking

for yours.

Night after night,

I bargain with sleep.

Please,

let me dream of you.

Let me borrow you

for a few impossible hours.

Because morning

is the cruellest invention

the Maker ever made.

Morning insists

you are gone

all over again.

The light is off.

Your face.

My face.

An ocean

between them.

Tell me—

what could possibly exist

that is greater

than the miracle

of being loved by you?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

People tell me

that time heals.

I think they mistake

scar tissue

for resurrection.

There are wounds

that simply become

part of the fibre

of the soul.

You are one of mine.

And perhaps

that is another name

for forever.

If somewhere

beyond this breathing world

you can still hear me,

know this—

I still love you.

Across oceans.

Across winters.

Across countries,

cemeteries,

and impossible distances.

Across every life

the universe has forgotten

to give us.

Until my bones become dust.

Until my name

is spoken

for the very last time.

Until even memory

falls asleep.

I will meet you

where the boulevard begins—

where abandoned dreams

grow into wildflowers,

where old vinyl records

play without ending,

where motorcycles

never run out of road,

where the lights

are forever singing,

and where, at last,

I shall hear you

say my name

one more time.

Postscript. 

This poem is dedicated to my dear Mikel Niso and his feature film, Boulevard (2026). The dedication is not born of obligation but of observation. It is an uncommon privilege to encounter someone so young who possesses not only evident talent but also the far less common virtues of humility, sincerity, and a heart untouched by vanity. Such qualities deserve acknowledgment. The poem, therefore, is my small tribute to both the artist and the young man behind the performance.

There are few spectacles more tragic—or more divine—than the slow, incandescent erosion of a gifted soul. Mr. Burton, the 2025 cinematic meditation on the life of Richard Burton, is not merely a film, nor even a biographical retelling—it is a grand threnody to the soul of man burdened with greatness. And in the hands of Harry Lawtey, that burden becomes a thing of unspeakable majesty.

The modern biopic, more often than not, leans toward an unwholesome gluttony. It gorges itself on costume, scandal, and period furniture, believing that verisimilitude lies in mimicry and plot. But Mr. Burton does something entirely different—something braver and more sacred. It looks not at what Richard Burton did, but who he became beneath the armour of theatrical success and tabloid fame. It trades narrative for revelation, choosing to illuminate not the chronology of a life, but the contours of a soul at war with itself.

At the heart of this ecclesiastical venture stands Harry Lawtey, whose performance is not a portrayal, but a transfiguration. There is no artifice, no strain, no desperate thespian showboating. Rather, Lawtey descends—yes, descends—into the infernal crevices of Burton’s torment, bringing back with him the fire of a man who could command Lear with the voice of a god, yet crumbled like dust before his own reflection. Lawtey’s eyes alone, in moments of silence, achieve more than most entire scripts manage with armies of words. He has not studied Burton to impersonate him; he has become Burton to understand him. This, I daresay, is not acting. This is theology.

But let us speak honestly about what Mr. Burton dares to depict: the unbearable paradox of genius. Burton, as presented here, is no hero. He is no villain either. He is a man—flesh and folly, thunder and ruin. He drinks not only from bottles but from the poisoned chalice of his own fame. He hungers, not for applause, but for absolution. The film does not sanctify him, nor does it crucify him; it reveals him. It allows him to remain unsolved, unredeemed, and therefore unforgettably human.

The film’s direction, far from overreaching, shows the wisdom of restraint. The camera lingers not to flatter but to confess. Scenes unfold not with orchestral grandeur, but with the hush of liturgy. We are given time—not to consume Burton, but to contemplate him. The cinematography understands darkness—not merely as an absence of light, but as the necessary cradle in which certain truths must be born. The script, elegant and sparse, often withholds more than it delivers, inviting the viewer into that rarest of cinematic experiences: listening.

It would be an injustice, however, to speak only of Burton the man, or Lawtey the vessel. One must also consider Mr. Burton as an argument against our age’s obsession with clarity. In a world that demands every story be neat, every personality either saint or scoundrel, this film dares to suggest that the most vital lives are those that remain unresolved. It reminds us that the human being is not a thesis to be proven, but a psalm to be wrestled with.

What Lawtey achieves here will be studied—must be studied—for decades to come. Not for its technique (though it is rich with it), nor for its resemblance (though it is uncanny), but for its courage. He has looked into the abyss of a man both beloved and broken, and rather than flinch or romanticise, he has remained. And in doing so, he has given us not simply Richard Burton, but a mirror into ourselves.

In the final analysis, Mr. Burton is not about fame or theatre or self-destruction. It is about the divine terror of being known—by others, by history, by Providence, and most of all, by oneself. It is a film one does not watch, but survives. And when the last scene fades, what remains is not applause, nor even sorrow, but silence—the kind of silence one finds in old churches and ruined cathedrals. The silence of something holy having passed through.

A bloody fucking miraculous feat, indeed, if I may be forgiven the phrase.

In Dance First (2023), director James Marsh has ventured, with a temerity bordering on irreverence, to offer us a version of Samuel Beckett’s life most curiously polished by the hand of Hollywood. Here is no dry recital of dates and deeds, but rather a whimsical, even fantastical, opening tableau: Beckett, that austere sentinel of silence, is depicted forsaking the solemnities of his Nobel ceremony to confer with a shadow-self — a suave, roll necked alter ego, more at ease in the world, more forgiving of its follies. Together they muse upon the peculiar question of how, or rather to whom, the laureate might dispense the prize money, his conscience summoning a cavalcade of old ghosts and grievances which unfurl the tale in retrospective reverie.

One hardly requires the gifts of prophecy to surmise what Beckett himself — that tireless architect of despair and economy — might have murmured about such a portrait. Yet despite a tendency now and then toward theatrical indulgence, the film is played with considerable spirit and sincerity. Marsh does not shrink from the essential paradox of his subject: that the creator of a world defined by paralysis and silence lived, in truth, a life marked by gallant service in the French Resistance and romantic entanglements of no small consequence.

Gabriel Byrne lends Beckett a weary gravitas, dry as old parchment yet glinting with wit, while Fionn O’Shea sketches the younger man with all the hauteur and hungry idealism of youth. Sandrine Bonnaire inhabits the long-suffering Suzanne, whose constancy Beckett betrayed in his affair with the incisive Barbara Bray, brought to life here by Maxine Peake.

And so the film, for all its softening edges and its faint sweetness, proves a persuasive companion, offering its audience not despair, but rather a bitter draught tempered by the smallest, most human dollop of hope, distilled in the film’s quiet, melancholy farewell.