The Swing

Published in Electric Literature. Read here.

For weeks after, empty chains hung from the swing set. And then one day, a new swing appeared. Only it wasn’t new; it was worn in the seat. The blue was whitened at the stress points. Which suggested that this swing had been taken from a different playground, maybe a better playground, which had been upgraded. Or maybe a worse playground, where rainwater pooled in the slides and the mulberries made a mess and the yellowjackets lasted past Halloween. Where that pale old man wore nothing under his trench coat that time. Where your favorite thing—a basketball hoop, a hot metal teeter-totter, a swing—the thing you loved best, might be taken from you, might vanish in the daylight.