there’s no puppies with the dead, no solace; you wake up and
you know yo u ’re dead; and alone. O nly m y eyes m ove but
they barely see, the walls look the same but I barely see them;
tim e’s nothing here; it stands still; it’s not changing, never;
yo u ’re like a m um m y but with m oving eyes scanning the
shadowy walls, but barely seeing them; and then the pain
comes; the astonishing pain, like someone skinned the inside
o f your throat, took a knife and lifted the skin o ff inside so it’s
raw, all blood, all torn, the muscles are ripped open, ragged,
stretched and pulled, you’re all ripped up inside as if you had
been torn apart inside and under your throat there’s a deep pain
as if it’s been deep cut, deep sliced, as if there’s some deadly
sickness down there, a contagion o f long-suffering death, an
awful illness, a soreness that verges on having all the nerves in
your body up under your throat and someone’s crushed
broken glass into them and there’s a physical anguish as if
someone poured gasoline down your throat and lit it; an
eternal fire; deep fire; deep pain. I felt the pain, and as the pain
got sharper and deeper and stronger and meaner, the walls got
clearer, I saw them clearer and they stayed still, and as the pain
got worse, crueler, I could feel the bed under me and m y old
drunk body and I figured out that I was probably alive and
time had passed and I must o f been out, in a coma,
unconscious, suspended in nothing except whatever’s cold
and black past actual life, and I couldn’t move and I wanted my
dog but I couldn’t call out for her or make any sound, even a
rasping sound, and I couldn’t raise m yself up to see where she
was although in m y mind I could see her all curled up in her
corner o f the room at the foot o f the mattress, being good,
being quiet, how she curled her head around to her tail and the
sweet, sad look on her face, how she’d just sit thinking with
her sweet, melancholy look and I hoped she’d come and lick
me and I wondered if she needed to be walked again yet but if
she did she’d be around me and I’d manage it, I swear I would,
and I wondered if she was hungry yet and I made a promise in
m y heart never to put her in danger with a stranger again, with
an unknown person, never to take a chance with her again, I
couldn’t understand what kind o f a man it was because it
wasn’t on m y map o f the world and I ain’t got a child’s map, did
he like it, to ram it down to kill me, a half second brutality o f
something o ff the map that didn’t even exist anywhere even
between men and wom en or with Nazis; and I don’t know if
he did other things, I can’t feel nothing or smell nothing, he
could have done anything, I don’t feel nothing near m y
vagina, I try to feel with m y fingers, if it’s wet, if it’s dirty, i f it
hurts, but everything’s numb except m y throat, the hurt o f it,
