Whipping out a small blue rectangle of miniature proportions to snap a still of my body reflected in a dirty puddle of water on the path to the park was how I passed the time on after school days that I did not have to work. Mostly autumn, November I can see on the horizon clearly. The wind always blowing, my fingertips always freezing off. One or two pedestrians, sometimes together, walking patient canines or running in fuzzy workout sweaters, giant headbands pushing back their hair. I’d sit on a swing and make myself go high, higher, higher, whilst my white, earwax-caked pods pumped some tune I had deemed inspirational inside my ears. My hips would ache halfway through, and the swinging would leave my head and body nauseous. Yet I’d grin, adoring the chance to avoid any children or mothers who’d bitch and whine about how I’m too old to have a fun time at the park. Nobody brings their child to the park as it freezes over. The cold, dense metal that hung the swing in its place would come for my fingers. It always attempted to get me off, get me gone, gone, gone. I didn’t always resist, but when I finally did decide it was getting to be the time where I trudged back to my humble abode, I would never simply drag my feet along the mulch to slow myself. I’d swing myself as high as possible, reaching up to the icy blue ceiling with the rounded tips of the same black fuzzy snow boots I bought every year. Then I’d toss myself into that sky, always falling, always landing right where the ground hit my nerves. I would let out a shakier breath, I would let my heart start to pump itself a little bit faster. And then I’d crunch through the dirty leaf sandbox, past the water area closed for the winter, and back on the path, where maybe I’d catch a glance of one of those people. They might’ve uttered a greeting as they jogged past, and I was too into myself to notice. A sudden sprint of pattering on the salt covered blacktop as the tune still playing in my ear picked up during its final chorus.
