Black and White

He would channel surf though the photographs in his mother's shoebox that he kept on the top shelf of the closet, the black ink of her static memories projected on a yellowing white glossy cardstock screen. Aunts, sisters, cousins, classmates in one roomed elementary schools and small county high schools with malt shops down the street and barbershops where men with hats and ties worn in the middle of the day would go and discuss politics and morality. The names of the suspended strangers didn't matter. He didn't need to know them; he only needed to nurse on the comfort that they were always in the same poses, always in the same box, always accessible on that top shelf. He could be certain that black would always be black and white refused to be anything but white. In his world, how could he know for sure that the red he saw on the ambulance light was the same colour that someone else saw on the cola sign? Colours were far too subjective. Black and white were monochromatic absolutes. For this reason he could sit for hours watching the same black and white comedies on television, holding close the sketched images drawn before colour muddled our thoughts.