Swing Set Shadows at Dusk

As day wanes the sun sinks and the shadows stretch and grow.  The light fades and the colors appear.  The blue canvas of the sky will jump into color and show the orange, red and yellow of the decline of day.  The shadows that have sat nocturnal during the bright of day come to action and begin to swell and grow.  They creep out from under all that stands on the ground.  Anchored to the objects that form them the shadows march away from the sun stretching as they go.  It is these shadows that will become the night as they grow and force away all that is light. The magic that is day will turn into the magic of the night.  It is in the obscuring black that nightly escapades become the reality.

But before the night swallows up the day for good there is a sliver, a slice of the dusk.  Dusk, the pause in time between two worlds so different.  It is then that day’s conclusion is considered and the plan of the night is set forth, devised and contrived.

Dusk is magic.  Summer dusk.  The heat fades and the cool of night floats out of the grass and dirt.  The sun no longer pushes his heat on the earth.

It was on the swing set that I would spend my dusks.  I would sit in the chain-suspended-seat and grip the rusted links.  The deep brown-orange would peak through the chipped paint in contrast to the faded yellow.  I would rock gently back and forth and the old chain would squeak and chirp and invite the cricket to join in the music of a outdoor concert.  The reluctant and reticent crickets would wait ‘til the fullness of dark to join the song, follow the metallic intro.

I would push myself backwards, feet on the oval patch of dirt, a brown egg on the green grass. Swing back in reverse—stop and then forward again with raised feet—stop and then reverse again—straight down and then another push.  So went the hypnotic motion.

Usually I would wait for Rachel to come.  She would creep from the trees and sit in the swing to my left.  She would always move in silence with no words.  She would sit and then turn to look at me and smile.  She would look away and gaze off into infinity and focus on nothing.  A gentle push would set her to the motion of hypnosis, like mine but out of sync.  Our pace was never quite the same except for random moments where we would be in unison for a handful of swings then our pendulum bodies would move progressively out of step until after a gap of unawareness we would again move towards unison and eclipse.

At some point we might talk, other days we would just swing in silence until she would hop off, wink, and run of.  When we did talk our words would float into the air and meander from mouth to ear in leisure.  Conversations were slow, they would move like fluffy clouds on a nearly windless day.  We may have spent the day together from the morning until the call for dinner but we still found conversation that was new and interesting.

She was my friend and then she was gone, moved away.

It wasn’t real until I sat in the swing thinking thoughts—fireflies in dark of my mind.  Thoughts would light up move around and then flicker out.  I expected her and sat until the last shred of orange slipped away.  The shadows had marched over the horizon and fallen off the edge of the world.  It was at the dark gray, right before the star speckled black that I remembered that I had said goodbye.  Her family had moved away and taken her with them.  It was something that I knew about from the beginning of summer but had not really believed.  I was so used to her being around that I didn’t think it was really possible that she could ever really be gone.  Even when I watched her drive away it was a dream, a fantasy.  Her absence wasn’t real in my mind. Until that moment as the day died and night was born.  It hit me.  I put my feet down and stopped.  I stood up off the swing seat.  I walked in a circle and then stopped.  I sat down on the grass.  Then it became real.  The weight of it sank down on me, it distilled like a dew of sadness—a wet blanket that made me shiver from the coldness. 

Eventually I got up and went inside.  I went to bed and dreamt strange dreams, nightmares of twisted memories.  I dreamt that she came back for me and that her leaving wasn’t real.  We were together again.  We could sit on the swings again—our swinging was the back and forth of a metronome that ticked on to infinity without measuring time’s passing.  Our bodies were the golden circle on the long arm beneath the grandfather clock that moved back and forth.  But the clock had frozen hands, lame hands, that would not and could not move or walk the march of time.

A week passed that was misery and nightmare.  But it ended when I accepted the reality of her absence.

She was the first girl that I loved and I didn’t know it until it was too late.  I never told her because I didn’t know it until she was gone.