white washed

The young man in front of me is drawing.  
It's friday night and we're at a bookstore,
I'm happy to see that some kids
still know how to party.
There are a few groups of girls, his age,
drinking double whipped caramel coffee concoctions;
each with an arm next to a designer bag
that costs another households monthly groceries,
and the other in early stages of symbiotic evolution,
holding firm to their cellphones.

They all wear black yoga pants;
proof that the angels that fell
should be the first to be thanked.

If he notices, it doesn't impress him as much as the soft face
that he is cutting with an eraser out of the pile of graphite
he so lovingly mounded. He is talented; a somber, yet grace
filled woman appears on his page. She is looking down, hold-
ing some token in her hand. I pray away my anticipation of it
becoming a religious image.

It is stark, very little range in his greys, and I fight the urge
to suggest to him simply using more pencils, to progress
from lean to the fat that wants so bad to drown the page.

I compliment the young man, under the guise of it being about
his drawing. My greys over extend themselves, and the form
that attracts my marks never quite comes into focus.