vegas houses another gambler

I was more articulate when I was more stationary, and when my steatite demeanor washed over statues to rush them, in a desperate attempt I jabbed life by its throat and it gasped as I shook the dull entity. And it blurted out three mismatched coins of misfortune, and the slot machine harnessed my tongue.

There is a gaping void that comforts itself in my midriff, an intruder in my gated society. And it drags this harness, once extending to the periphery, back to the center. I have trusted life but it was an imitation. I recall being seven and hurt, but it was an imitation.

I trace the grooves of the slot machine, feeling the indentations long. The lever is cold. It stares at me, dead-eyed, waiting to be pulled. I used to believe the machine could be beaten, that probability was just a coward in the face of persistence. But my tongue is still trapped in its gears, and the void in my midriff tightens like a belt fastened by unseen hands.

I step onto the rink, the ice thin under my weight, veins of cracks reaching outward like grasping fingers. If I am to travel this boundary on my glittery ice rink skates, every hurt is not a wince, every hurt is an examination. Hurt is the virtue by which I am capable of thought. The all-seeing eye of sentience ferments above my damp skull, in the exposed ceiling and dangling overhead lights that force in my eyes like a surgeon with rent due.

I skate, and the cracks widen. I skate, and the void swells. The machine rattles behind me, gears clicking, its hunger insatiable. I do not pull the lever, but the reels spin anyway.