Buttermilk

Glass, broken glass, that was easy, floors were everywhere and gravity did most of the work. Glass wanted in, it didn’t wait to be invited, sidling into his feet like an old friend dropping round.

Walls, walls, easy enough. All it took was patience, and he had plenty of that. He loved the strange shapes his fingers made, the unfamiliar lumps that crooked his hands, the ineloquent stuttering of his wrists. Electric fire up to his elbows.

Milk white, veined with red, sweet and acrid as cheese, lemon bloom as he gets his teeth in, copper wash of new blood laving down his throat. Long clean poolside burn of chlorine, unpleasant waxen ooze of soap, hair, frogskin.

Stairs, traffic, bridges, cliffsides, beaches. The ocean purls around his ankles, buries his feet in little stones. A long rope of kelp coils invitingly around his knee. He stands aside and waits for that first, last, only step.