BLACK

There's a place in this city that's black. It isn't gray, or brown or even a distant charcoal. But black.

It's a triangle, a part that juts into the corner of the ground floor of the building that has the lotto. (People queue up here endlessly guessing at their lucky numbers.)

Next to it is the part that runs in in a half-moon, the crescent serving as a dumping place.

The triangle is the bedroom and the cresecent is the dump. This is where the poor sleep. The men, sometimes two, sometimes, three, sometimes just one, almost merge into the blackness of the triangle. They will lean against the iron shafts that separates the building from the road, while they eat from plastic bags or paper that spreads to shield their food from the road. The colour of their skin is brown when it is still visible to your eye. But otherwise, they are the same color as the walls, coloured in soot.

Why is the place so black? It's not like it is painted black. But it does look like a place that has been spray painted with soot. Even graffiti.

When the rest of Manila passes it by in Aircon cars and ingenuous tricycles and jeepneys, the men sleep as though in the deepest trance.

The heat.
The crowd.
They don't seem to matter to these men. Doesn't matter to the man, who will just sleep. He continues to sleep even when the woman, carrying ham in her arms walks past and knocks off his bottle of water in careless antic. Nothing matters to this man.

Sometimes, I pass the black and it's deserted. I am left wondering where the men without shoes disappear. Where do they disappear barefeet, while I walk swiftly to keep the heat rising under my flipflops trampled underneath.

It's almost as if the place consumes the men and creates them all over again, just to bring the black triangle to life. For without them, there is no life there, but for a graffiti of silkworms done in a geometrical pattern. The worms look like they are dancing when the men come back. But otherwise, just stick to the wall, in black.

I avoid the black corner as much as I can. I try not to pass it in the night. I try not to pass it when alone. I try not to pass it if I feel like I want to see nothing black that day. But it's the part of the city that interests me the most. It's a part that's actually never hurts me or makes me cringe. (Or maybe I cringe).

But it's the only part that remains confined to itself, redefining itself like a phoenix with the presence of the men. It's like an act staged, over and over again for just my sake. To the others who walk that way, it's just another part of the city.