Gary, what struck me most was how unflinching this felt. There is no attempt to soften what addiction can become. The repetition of Drink. Work. Drink. Work. creates a rhythm that feels almost industrial, as though the speaker has been reduced to a machine carrying out a cycle he no longer believes he can escape.

After all the reflections on mortality, isolation, and self-erasure, the sound of the ringpull becomes the signal to begin the day. It's a devastating inversion of what a morning ritual should be.

A difficult piece to read in places, which is precisely why it succeeds. Thank you for sharing it. Monica