(Week Eight) Improvisation #2 of Form

of Ed. Hirsch's "Branch Library"

My Improv':

I wish I could find that skinny boy, the one who wears
old round-framed glasses too big for his face. Really,

he wore everything too big: shirts that appeared to eat
away the upper half of his body when he sat down

in his desk, the one pair of sneakers forced his feet
into the habit of a permanent shuffle. We sat side-by-side

on the front row of Ms. Harden's AP Lit. class in ninth
grade. His name was Joseph. In my mind, I made him smart

because dorks were always short and quiet and poor. I'd twirl
my hair and smile at him, but our conversations always

had to do with me flirting neglected homework assignments
out of him. I was too cool and caught up with love letters

from a senior on the high school football team. But for two
weeks Joseph missed our class, and turns out he wasn't in any

of his classes. The Monday before Christmas break, I walked
into class early, eager to read my newest note. Joseph sat in his desk,

smaller, somehow. He was fair-skinned and freckle-faced, now
covered with days old knuckle marks on each of his cheekbones,

light yellow and a deep purple feigned black. I could only think
I'd ever seen that kind of discolour on a bruised banana. Joseph smiled

at me as I took my seat and said he missed having a friend to talk
literature with in the mornings. How he ever could mistake my chattiness

for anything more than desperation, I don't know. My stomach knotted,
guilty--I'd never call Joseph my friend. And that forced subject change,

which went to the fortunes of North Georgia in winter: lots of mountains
and pine trees, clear night skies flooded with dying stars, falling and fading

like snowflakes.We both loved hot chocolate and sugar cookies. Tis the season
for presents. And I told him pathetic wish-list. I wanted new clothes

my mother couldn't actually afford but would still buy. Joseph gave me
a warm laugh and said it was okay to expect expensive things. I was pretty

and popular. But what do poor kids want, I asked. With a smile that,
for the first time, aged him, Joseph said a new tv. His, turns out,
was one of those tiny black-and-white boxes from the fifties.

All I want, he said, is to see the world in color.