Kieran

Kieran had loved a girl called Magda Avelina. She broke his heart with heat and ice, a remote Latin princess. The climate changes destroyed his love and melted his confidence and capacity to give himself unconditionally. In the place of one true love he settled for marriage with the next woman who drifted into his peripheral vision.

Still, years later, the memories of MA haunted him like the death of a child, a joyous body wave of sadness and pain. His marriage fed and clothed him, but never did it nourish or cure him. This he sought through alcohol, self medication and violence. He had given MA all of him, and she had been unmoved, expressionless. Simply, he had not been enough and now he raged at the world. He could not look in the mirror for fear of another broken and cut hand.

Losing the briefcase like that had engulfed him in an ocean of darkness. Over the following weeks, fighting for the light, struggling to breathe, the robbery had created in him an insistent fury so powerful that he feared for himself and all around him.

That night, outside the metro, he had not been good enough.
Again.

Kieran knew that what he craved must leave him with nothing but a fleeting sense of achievement, before hitting the sea floor, finally closing his eyes to the light above.