“Landscape,” 2016, by Ireashia Monét

In October, my best friend who lived down
the block called me on the phone and asked me
to come over, and when I got there the front
door was unlocked, and I heard his voice
from the bedroom and followed, and he was
lying naked on the mattress, his midriff censored
by a worn gray sheet, and he told me they were
going to take him to juvie, and the officers had
already warned him what happened there, and he
wanted to know what it would feel like, and his legs
tumbled out, dishonest and pale, from beneath
the covers, legs I wrote down, which cannot
explain how tired we both were, but instead
describes only the room, the bed, the gray
sheet, everything his legs were touching.