Last year, after a very frustrating meeting, someone I used to trust invited someone I now love (who I previously barely knew) and I to their house for drinks and venting.

That night I drank more than I ever had before, and to this day ever have. I needed help to get to the bathroom and the world spun in our toasts to fuck-this and screw-them. The person who I didn't love yet settled into my arms. Somewhere above the stench of gamer sweat and unwashed fleshlight and the glaring gay-pride-antifscist-action flag I try to think that a connection was beginning to take hold. But probably not.

"Have you heard the Tale of the Prodigal Son?" the person who I used to trust asked, talking just above the volume of the cider. I shook my head no. "Would you like to hear it?" We shook our heads no.

And so I learned the Tale of the Prodigal Son.

You know I figure that if I took my spoils and split

then became so hungry I lived with the pigs

I would feed the pigs rice

for little do some people know

the pigs are the brothers of the woman who gave us rice

and when the brothers (boars themselves) died upon the sight of their sister's murder, they turned into every animal that eats rice.

If I ever returned to my father

who I had to have left for a reason,

I would walk with a herd of pigs

well-fed with rice and water

and maybe he would barely distinguish us from one another.