Poor Tony passing the window, grave-ready
Poor Tony Krause looked godawful: sucked-out, hollow-eyed, past ill, grave-ready, his face’s skin the greenish white of extreme-depth marine life, looking less alive than undead
Context
The Withdrawal seen a second time, from a diner's window: sucked-out, hollow-eyed, grave-ready, skin the greenish-white of deep-marine life, less alive than undead. The portrait is the disease's late physiology made visible on the street — a body being hollowed out by the absence of the thing it needs, the withdrawal advertising itself in the flesh as a kind of walking death. It rhymes with the library-stall glimpse across the montage, the same man dissolving in real time.