Playground

The fence can’t even keep itself out now, for years kicked in and bent up till the bottom of it’s curling like a chain-link wave about to break across the strip of grass so it can wash away or join the minor turbulence of stubbed smokes, and condom wrappers, and a beer can crushed beside a queen of hearts (thrown down in triumph or defeat?).

Beyond the grass and moon glow of sand under swings and the boney gleaming of a jungle gym grown colder every second by forgetting all the busy little heat of hands, the blacktop is a black hole that has swallowed up the chalked hearts and initials, the four square boundaries and foul lines, while beyond the fence the fence is facing out in the street under the streetlight the inside of a ripped open half of a tennis ball (hit or hurled?) is blacker than the blacktop it is tipped toward, somewhere in which the other half is surely lying, tipped toward the street. Tipped, you could say, like an ear. You could say the silence is the sound of one ear listening for the other from the bottom of an interstellar hole. You could say sand dunes. Aphasic metal. The breaking chain links of a wave. At night, in the playground, you could say anything.