Revisiting Childhood

I stand here in my empty childhood playground.

The trees are old, gnarled and dead.

They remind me of the trees in Hell.

I see the grass of the field is brown now.

Not green like it used to be.

The sky is dark and clouded, close to black in the intensity of its darkness.

I look down to see the tire swing on the jungle gym.

It hangs, an odd hangman's relic, the other two chains rusted through.

I look elsewhere.

The monkey bars are rusted and bent.

Someone has hanged a small animal, possibly a rabbit, from them.

It only accentuates the hangman's tire swing.

The small wood bridge is missing planks.

They are off to the side, charred.

Someone had built a fire out of them.

I look to my favorite slide.

It is all but collapsed.

A rusted, decrepit vision.

I stop and remind myself hard, on why this came to pass.

I sit on the one remaining regular swing and hope it does not break.

It holds.

The cold wind brings with it rain.

It is as icy as the hand of death, and I try not to cry.

But that is silly.

I have no tears left.

I'm just waiting to die.

I look to the ground before me.

Shards of broken glass are now among the safe little pebbles.

A rusted razor blade rests near my foot.
The rust color reminds me of old blood.

A pile of used syringes rest under one of the rotting wooden platforms.

This place is as dead on the outside as I am on the inside, I think.

It is a place of lost dreams, cold and barren.

It is a reflection of what I have become.

A.J. Downey
11-04-1998