There’s a place in this city that’s black.

not gray, or brown

or even a distant charcoal. But black.

It’s a triangle—

that juts into the corner

of the ground floor

of the lotto building.

(People queue up here, endlessly

guessing at their lucky numbers.)

The triangle is the bed

for the homeless.

The men-

sometimes two,

sometimes, three,

sometimes just one.

appear and disappear,

merging into the blackness.

They eat out of plastic bags

and paper spread out against the floor,

noiseless, lean bodies

propped on iron shafts,

Some days of heavy rain,

the colour of their skin is brown.

Other days,

they are the same shade

as the sooty walls that surround them.

When the rest of Manila

passes the triangle 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.

Sometimes, the triangle is deserted.

The men

disappear in their semi-nakedness.

I walk past swiftly

trampling the roasted tarmac under my flipflops

thinking of their bare feet.

It’s almost as if

the triangle consumes the men

and creates them all over again,

just to bring the space back to life.

This part of the city

resurrects

with the presence of the men.

—an act staged, over and over again

 Just for sake of the passersby.