Refrigerator

My friend got so high he lost his mind.

Just one hit, and next thing we knew he walked face first into the heavy refrigerator door.

I followed him into the dining room and he walked up and over a chair

as if it weren’t there.

He turned and punched me in the face

and then coiled his arms up like a dead spider

and his cheeks sunk into caverns under his deceased eyes

and and his white body fell backward onto the floor.

We tried to make him shower

but he only played with his vomit in the toilet.

We tried to reason with him

but he only chanted

“nine-eleven | planes coming down | Safeway”

When his mother came to retrieve him

she cried because he couldn’t walk.

We didn’t talk about it for years,

but when we did,

he told me it was the worst day of his life

and that he thought to his core

as if his mind had fully convinced him

that there was no such time other than that day

and there was no such place other than that room with the chair

and that the only time that had ever existed was that moment

and that the only place that had ever existed was that room.