Black and White

In the visiting room evening's ebony is shellacking everything. He sits across from me at the sable-shaded table, in shades, pours black coffee pungent as the Gauloises he smokes, his sun-starved skin bone-white but brooding black light, an abandoned chessboard to his right, squares of day and night, the king checkmated, a game lost and won, pawns scattered and fallen. I saw people as just pawns in a game... Led like lambs unknowingly, their lamb-white light dazzling his dark; the ghost-gleam of graves secret and snowed on, snowed under, a sprinkling of snow-light over onyx-shadowed night. The stark-sudden cold relief of white. I dodged the death penalty by six months... His voice is low, nicotine-husky, the tarry crawl of emphysema creeping and wheezing in his lungs. My girl bleached her hair white as bones... The early sixties were so black and white - photography, TV, monochrome movies - even my thoughts were black and white... Outside, white smothers with a feathery dove-light. Inside, he's stalked by the panther of night and not everything is black and white.