If only my cold fingers could just grasp at the lifeline that is sobriety, hearth and home, family… For want of the gloves of compassion, I sit here under my bridge and while away the time, reciting poetry to rats, and sleeping in the grime made up of luckier men’s footprints.

The sun riseth upon fangs of dogs, as hungry as I. My first thought is not to fight back. But where would I be then? Surely they’d not rip through these layers of disgust that I wrap myself in. No. I shall live to behold the fathomless expanse of stars, and wonder what the universe I once belonged to will grace me with next. Long past are the days when, in my delusion, I believed I had control.