Swing Swinging

A swing swinging in a playground isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Kids can’t be swinging all day, every day. But when you widen your peripheral and see no one is using the rest of the playground, a feeling will grow in your chest. It could be humor, or it could be indifference. Is this playground so bad that no one wants to play on it? Is this playground empty because the kids are in school? The wind makes the sand blow away, grain per grain. The brown, crispy leaves rustle when the wind touches and moves them around. You look up to see a sky covered by a blanket of grey. You would expect rain, thunder, or even a howling sound from the wind blowing by, flowing through your hair. But nothing. It’s so quiet you start to listen for the sounds we learn to tune out after a while.

No birds are whistling; no mother is scolding her kid in town. You turn your head toward the houses and the people that are supposed to make up a town, but something is missing. With a squint, you look closer. You look at the street stretching behind the first wall of houses, almost like a shield. You can see no shoes trotting, no ugly Frozen designs, and no untied Converse. Your eyes slowly glance over to one of the windows facing the playground; it’s dark. The windows are tainted with grey dust, and no light from the inside allows you to guess what’s inside.

All the other windows are the same, eliminating the opportunity to observe a day in the town’s people’s lives. Maybe they’re all at school and work? But there are no happy kids shrieking, and no adults are waiting for their cup of black coffee to resurrect them from the life they want, the life they dream of. You turn back to the playground, and suddenly, the absence of anything and anyone starts to feel less humoristic. Is the playground that bad? Are all the children in school? Or does the lack of people have nothing to do with the lousy playground and everything to do with the dark brown Thing rising from the sandbox? The wind blows away grain by grain of sand, but something is emerging instead of the mass decreasing. Your breath is taken away by the wind, helping the Thing materialize. Your breath quickens, and you don’t know if it’s because of the terror in front of you or if the wind literally took your breath away. You will never have the chance to find out.