A Gift of Chalk

My friend L. once gave me a box of white chalk the approximate size & shape of a pack of cigarettes. What’s this, I asked. Well, if someone comes up & asks you for a cigarette, she said, you could give him a piece of chalk. O.K., thanks, I said, & stuck it absent-mindedly in my backpack. Just now, rummaging in the bottom of the pack for a book, I found it again. It took me a second to remember where it had come from. A mouse had gotten in at some point & nibbled a small hole in the top of the box, but the twelve chalks were all still unbroken. Development Through Creativity, says the Crayola logo, as if there were any other way. Makes clean, smooth lines & erases easily, it says on the back, & suddenly I have a strong urge to go out & draw something on the sidewalk, something with clouds & white orchids, polar bears, paper birches, skeletons, dandelion seedheads, albino deer with great branching antlers, waterfalls, waterlilies, the Milky Way— all with the smoke from elegant faux cigarettes. But it’s dark out now, & winter. Sleet ticks against the window, & the walk is buried under a fresh half-inch of white.