While moving domiciles, I found a letter you wrote me when you were still alive.
You didn't put a date on it, but I'm guessing '75.
I had forgotten how nice your handwriting was and how sweet you could appear.
You addressed me as "Hey lover" and frequently called me "dear."
You said how "hard" you missed me, and the usage seemed quite twee.
You were still in Alabama and I had moved to Tennessee.
I'd moved to try and save at least one of us from dying;
'Cause make no mistake about it; that is what we both were trying.
The sweetest love on earth had morphed and shifted shape;
The things that we were doing left all our friends agape.
One-on-one type interventions were routine and then ignored.
We were on a path to Hell and it was "All Aboard!"
The first time that I saw you walk into my freshman class
I knew that as your teacher I could not tap that ass.
But semesters go by swiftly and soon I was at your door.
That began Night One of around a thousand more.
Letters such as the one just found, along with prepaid calls
Eventually led me to ask you once again to deck my halls.
I drove to Tuscaloosa in that rusted out old Ford
And soon we were both in Memphis shouting, "Praise the Lord!"
When the nastiness began again, as I knew it surely would,
I kicked you to the curb and we said "good-bye" for good.
You started waiting tables at a bar not far from me
And met a set of worthless friends who adopted you for free.
They took you on a camping trip where (they told me) t's and blues released you from this world
All I meant to say with this is, "I've been thinking of you, girl."