Tough

I see the boys standing on the corner – playing with cancer as they smoke their first cigarettes. They are waiting for their world to begin. A fresh page for them to color – this one will be red. How long have they been here? When will they be gone? That one started shaving last Saturday. He nicked himself just below his Adam’s apple. When they move, they move as a group. There is safety in numbers in the jungle and out in the street. Sometimes they forget they have real names. They call each other things that would make their mothers blush, and it makes them proud. Someone yells from a passing car and they salute. If they had to run, they couldn’t. Fashion and attitude weigh them down: baggy jeans and what’s it to you? So safe and so close to dying.
They lean on trash cans and street signs. The weight of everyday pulls them down. They talk about tomorrow like it was ten years from now - time is elastic and painful for someone yearning to be twenty. The deals they make turn them into kings for a weekend, then it's back to the corner. Back to the broken fences and painted sidewalks - back to the place that feels like home.
The women in their lives are mothers and sisters. Girlfriends take too much time and effort. They all know the same eight girls, and none of them has had a date since they could drive. It doesn't keep them from talking, though - shouting and hooting, making a cell phone call. It's good theater.
Someday there will be fewer of them. One is moving with his family to Nevada. It sounds like a foreign country. Another will join the Army because there was nothing better to do. A few of them will take a vacation in corrections, but they'll be back. Under a streetlight that has just come on the momentum shifts again.