fuckery

we were drunk. you were going to teach me how to walk on glass. i was afraid, i didn't want to do it, but we had an agreement; you could break this fear in me if i gave myself over to you, and later, i'd be able to taste it in the back of my throat when i broke you down, taste it like cottonmouth, taste it like coke drip. i was still afraid. my life seemed perfectly normal, if dull, until that point. we had been skirting this issue for years. you used to dare me, staring out over blank slates of corn and soybeans, to cut my palms open, to leave bloody handprints on your body. i was afraid of you. my teenage histrionics left me open to infection and pre-fabricated role playing, left me set for thrown fists and pre-dawn phone calls. i realize now that i was never smarter, that i was always this stupid, and it is the cold center of my ignorance that i choose to make the past and not the future my forum for change. you were pushing me with word and hand, you forced the situation. i pulled my shoes and socks off, sick through my body for doing the thing i knew not to ever do. the information of the glass entering the soles of my feet meant as little as musak at the mall, crossing the threshold, violating boundaries. in the center of the glass was a hole. the night being moonless, the lights of my car shining away into the trees and milkweeds, i could see nothing but the blank space. i knew if i did this that this would be all i would ever do. i remember, after you left, searching my sheets for stains so as to have something to remember, to file away, and finding none. the blood vessels in my eyes pounded from gravel-dust and too little sleep and too much cheap speed. i couldn't, and still cannot, remember the last time i dreamt. my knees bent, after fighting me for what seemed like days, finally giving, and i was over the hole. the only thing i could taste was vomit. you lied to me. you lied to me. i will never forgive myself. i held out my hand. there was a pain in my lungs from holding back sobs and heaves. you knew. you always knew. that i was too much the coward to turn against myself. i knew this was real. i put my hand into the hole. my pulling back my fingers into a fist was as much defiance as i could muster. and i reached deeper into that hole. and deeper. and deeper, until
i heard something click.