just before a sudden rain came down this morning, two boys, unhurried by no school, were chalking - like tv homicide detectives - the outlines of each other's bodies in the curbside in front of my building.
first, the chubby one sprawled himself prone while the chicken-legged, one with a concentration as severe as his buzz cut, traced his friend's acreage. the dead friend's mensuration, when it was done, looked like that of a flailing, beached baby whale.
a friend from work was telling me while we await the next shift people that i seemed to look paler than ever before. he seemed to be genuinely worried about my losing color. and this is how he said it. "be careful now, you could lose yourself soon." i told him i could just use more sun this summer or some iron supplements, whichever is easier on my pocketbook.
i was still thinking of my friend's observation when i saw these tyro crime scene investigators. my friend's suggestion was spectral, implying that without my color, i am absent, a discrete and unrelated entity, from the life i had so far. that none of the stuff i have been doing, the work i have, the boys i slept with, and some of those i fell in love with, these are nothing, devoid of any recognizable meaning, without the darkness of my skin.
the rain came suddenly like a swift justice. the chalk outlines bled into the blandness of the pavement. and despite dashing towards my building as fast as i could, i still managed to get soaked. after i peeled off everything i wore, a dark purplish band showed up under the elastic band of my boxers. i couldn't bring myself to rub it off.
