I knew fear
 When the bully turned his attention to me
 When his sneer settled into a satisfied smirk
 Accompanied by a condescending glare 
 Comprised of evil glints behind the blackest of eyes 
 and a palpably hot internal furnace of anger

 He knowingly appraised me 
 He looked into my  very soul
 He asked himself the unspoken questions 
 only I should have known the answers to,
 but he determined in a instant
 What vulnerability lies here?
 What weakness can I exploit 
 to the point of causing immediate pain 
 and then  
 terrible ongoing hurt?
  
 Thus
 I became a victim
 I let him use my own low self esteem 
 as the leverage necessary to do me harm
 To render me powerless to resist
 To enable me to damage myself even further 
 To punish myself for allowing 
 the damage to be done
  
 I became complicit
 in my own degradation and misery
  
 With no one to blame but myself