Moles

Marco had moles. His skin looked like a real time photograph of space, the infinite lights blending together in undifferentiated dullness and punctuated scattershot by celestial happenings, predicates on the make. Nova. Class D Star. Black hole. Collision of quarks. He used to wonder if he was meant to be darker, to be a person of color. All the moles were a single mocha hue. It was as if his coloration had been stopped, the recessive whiteness given a boost, a childhood vaccination—his color the victim of a big bang. Alone, nine years old and asleep within the water heated bowels of Westminster Academy, Marco had wept over the miniscule remnants of his blackness. As an adult he spent his summers oiled, prone and pleading.