Nothing’s gone from this white-trash lakeside where young mothers pull honey-buns from their bras and where xanax salesmen can’t spell their own product. You remember the elephantine man. He’s one of the few drunks who nurses me benzodiazepine tea until the petrified spiders are off every wall. It’s inconsistent. Yesterday he beat the dog until it threw up. It gets so dark I can only see his teeth and he says, I never gave God permission to create you. I think what he’s trying to say is that he loves something. I’ve woken to him naked and over me, clicking a butterfly knife in one hand, stroking with the other. It makes the ulcers bite. Though nothing is enough to drown me or dry me out. I’m afraid I miss you.