For My Childhood Swing

We were eighteen years old. The winds whistled in the north, the sun danced in the south. We lived somewhere in the middle, feeling like we did not quite belong to the wind, nor to the sun. Perhaps we were the long-distant soul daughters of an ant. You see, after all, life can hold many surprises.

The swing was creaking as we desperately held on to the last bits of our childhoods. Up and down, up and down, I swung forth, you swung back. An abstract expression of grief.

Say, sun, when I grow into an old lady, will I still be able to appreciate your shine? Say, wind, even in death, will I be able to feel your cool breath on my face?

I held out my right arm to you, reaching for a warm body like the penguins of Antarctica. Like a bee landing on her flower.

The weather reporter said that in two days the sun will be out the longest this year. They say that the sun causes skin cancer, but it gives you vitamin D. I still cannot reach you even though you have been here for so long. Will I become sick?

Is growing up the same as reaching for the sun? A sweet desperation creeps up in me.

I held out to you like a moth seeking a lamp. In the bright days of our eighteenth summer, my eyeshadow shimmering in white light. Grow up with me. You stretched your arm out to reach mine, both of us stopping in the middle of our childish movements before starting to swing in sync. You stared at me, your fingers entwining my hand. Come on, grow up with me, I said.

The girl averted her eyes from me, the warmth of her fingers disappearing from my hand.

I cannot, she said.

A twinge of hopelessness appeared on her face, but she did not stop swinging.

I cannot.

I cannot grow up with you, I whispered to myself.

And, just as we were sitting on our swings in the midst of the air, the girl next to me was gone.

The winds still whistled somewhere in the north. I heard a baby crying. A football hit my back. I flinched from the pain.

I need to get off this swing. Though one flies back and forth, back and forth, the swing gives just an illusion of living. Just a speck of the beauty that life has to offer. You are lovely — I do not need you. You are so lovely. Let me live my life.