Looking at the picturesque surroundings, I want to strip away the years like asbestos and old lead paint, see it pure and dirty. When the proprietor of the Thai restaurant is a little rude I don’t expect different. Vape shops like the one in view from the porch crop up everywhere like kudzu, used car lots, beauty parlors in Eastern Kentucky — but I trust them far less since they insist on pretending they sell pipe tobacco and cigars. Flocks of dirty blondes wearing muted colors and sunglasses that cover carefully buffed cheekbones walk by. They do not look up or speak to me. I want to come back in the winter and be diverted from paths in the swampland park by sunbathing alligators. I think someday I will walk into the ocean and dissolve like soda ash.