Terrence Dewayne Boyd

You stand in Arjan Singh's kitchen with the light going orange on the counter, and you are tired of how well he works. The wiring in his forearms never complains. His knees are fine. You have been him for less than a minute, and already you know every room in this body, and there is nothing in any of them you want. Something sent you back. Maybe the quiet of a man who has never wanted anything loudly. You open the page. The wheel is already turning.

Then the floor is concrete, and your weight is on the left foot, the right leg stretched out behind you, both hands on a steel handle gone smooth. The pallet jack is moving. A trailer yawns ahead, dark inside. Past the open door the sky is deep blue and a red neon bleeds down the alley, and something in your chest, his chest, lurches. One push done wrong. You stop. You do it again, slowly, correctly. Then ten more, each one checked, though the job has not needed checking in years.

The glove on your right hand is cracked at the knuckle. Wearing it, you get a flash: a man's voice in a church basement, *stand up straight, Terrence*, and the particular shame of a clip-on tie at twelve. It goes. The handle is cold, then warm. Through it comes a Tuesday at this same door, three years ago, his first night he was trusted with the loading list, and the pride, small and fierce, of a clean stack.

The hoodie cuffs are damp at the wrist. Pulling them, you get this morning, or yesterday's morning, his: the hoodie off the chair back, the left arm in first because the right shoulder aches. Then the orange vest over it, Velcro rasping, and the cargo pants stiff at the knees. The boots, laced with his thumbs hooked under the tongue, hurrying, because the bus does not wait. A bowl of grits, eaten standing. A phone call he let ring, his mother's, and the guilt of it riding him all the way down the stairs.

The body is thin, long in the arm, and it burns pleasantly low in the back. His calves are tight. The hands know the weight of a box before you do. Nothing in him is hurt, and everything in him is tired in the honest way. Beneath that, a Saturday he has been saving: one big night, cheap whiskey, his cousin's laugh. You feel him anticipating it, and it is not yours.

You let go of the handle. You turn your hand over, the cracked glove, the palm hot inside it. Then you look up, at nothing, at the red light in the alley.

"Okay," you say, in a voice lower than you expected. "Okay. You're mine."

You wonder how long, and whether the wanting waits until Monday, or until the next breath.