By Corinna Schulenburg
On the playground the maskless kids crash like stocks.
They scramble up the metal tongues of slides
like names unsaying themselves.
The swings keep reminding us
there is no gravity until there is
so pull with your arms, kick with your legs.
At night, the streetlamps drench the place in a fire
made of bones and a million years of weight.
We moved here to have it be her backyard. City
kid. I grew up with dunes behind me.
But everywhere I love is scheduled to be drowned.
Here is the high ground. Here, the water rushes
out of faucets to fill balloons that smack
against the scalding pavement. Here,
run through the sprinklers and get yourself cool.
One September, she dashed through them every day
after school, drunk on her own daring.
In the pictures, each bead of water is suspended
around her rapture like a flight of liquid stars.
At night, teenagers drift into the seams
to paw at buttons and drag on smoke
before retreating to their shrinking beds.
Now the playground is empty. Now they begin,
the long, dreadful fingers, reaching backward
from a narrowing future to pull on the threads
of the place, all the promises it can
no longer keep. The grown-ups will come
in the morning, and with our bodies,
patch the holes and cover the frayed places,
as our kids climb rung by rung
into the arms of the sun.
Corinna Schulenburg (she/her) is a queer trans artist/activist. She’s a mother, a playwright, a poet, and a Creative Partner of Flux Theatre Ensemble. Poems in: Capsule Stories, Long Con, LUPERCALIA, miniskirt magazine, Moist, Moonflake Press, Okay Donkey, Oroboro, SHIFT, The Shore, and more. https://corinnaschulenburg.com/writer/poet/