When I found Cuddles and told him about the talking red leaves, he said to get the fuck away from him, stop coming around if I was gonna talk crazy and dance out of fear like a punk. But I wasn’t dancing. My feet was trying to hold steady on the loading platform, but my sneaks wouldn’t let me. You ever hear the scratchy voices of leaves? You ever try to hold steady on slippery ground?

They had the body marked out in chalk on the ground behind some blue sawhorses that said “Police Line—Do Not Cross.” It was right where we left him. I saw it glowing. “Here’s Metro,” I told myself. Here’s anybody, even me. A chalk outline and nothing inside. A fat white line of head, arms, body, and legs. A body curled into a heap to hold itself. Like a leaf or a dead bird, something dropped out of the sky or from a guy’s stretched-out hand. It was amazing. But it was also the figure of somebody. A man. Any man. So I walked around the outline, seeing it from different angles. How funny to see something that fixed, protected from people or from falling leaves or from the slimy drippings from sides of beef. The outline wasn’t Metro. It was somebody like me.

Once I saw the chalk figure I couldn’t get enough of it. I kept coming back and walking slower and slower around it, measuring how far it was from the police barricade and from where I stood looking down at it, sprawled where we left him. But I figured out a way to keep looking at it and not step in the garbage scattered nearby. You know, leaves, rags, torn newspapers, bits of dog hair, blood maybe, and lots more leaves. I went three steps this way and three steps that way, keeping the chalk outline in sight and missing the garbage and dogshit. One-two-three, one-two-three. Up-two-three, down-two-three. When I saw one of the neighbors watching from a window, I cut out of there. By then I knew what I had to do.

I came back that night. The chalk shape was glowing like crushed jewels under the streetlights. I took off my shirt and pants and didn’t even feel cold. I crossed the barricade and sat inside the chalk. The glow was on me now. It was me. I lay down in the shape of the dead man, fitting my head, arms, and legs in place. I was warm all over.