He stands in front of me, his hair dark and soggy with
shower water, sloppily combed to the side, sliding his delicate hands over the random shit on my nightstand, nonchalantly. He has no
boundaries- what is mine is his, and that is all he has ever known. Absentmindedly, he fingers
the edge of one of the books I haven't yet finished, rests on my camera, and pauses for a split second before he raises it to his face. He aims his probing little eye
through the finder, focuses on
something across the room, and then sets the camera back down, with a sigh. His eyes meet mine. He isn’t embarrassed that I'm watching him so
closely; he isn’t that self-aware yet. He stretches up, up, reaching his scrawny arms above his head and yawns, loudly.
I catch a whiff of
something, soapy, clean.
"Are you wearing deodorant?"
"Yes," he answers, matter-of-factly. "It makes me feel like a man."
Then he turns and skips out of the room, his spiderman pajama shirt
tucked into the back of his underwear.