Grant and Verity
everways
Did they fall in love over the curve of a piece of playground equipment?
Maybe a wooden planked bridge between them?
He'd stolen her toy and she'd chased after it, but they froze when they stared into each others' eyes. Blushing cheeks and bruised elbows, awkward children with scabbed knees. Clumsy the way moths seem, in the candlelight. And they were strained once, when he fell, and her breath stopped along with her heart. Stopped like a television screen switched off, the soft sound of a small death, the picture vanishing and leaving only black nothing. But the sand cushioned his fall, and he gallantly stood up and grinned that grin with the lower-slightly-to-the-right tooth missing, and bowed, and she laughed that he was alright. Butterflies were in their stomachs and their nets, they caught them, studying them with the fascination, wonder and intensity they would lose and never regain as high school biology students. And the seasons changed, and they kissed for the first time at the bottom of the slide, listening to the rain fall on top of it. And they grew older and they changed a little but it never mattered. He pushed her on the swing. She was the tac between his tic and toe. They'd stumbled drunkenly off the merry go round, and he'd looked into those eyes again, reflecting the light of the street lamp nearby... and they'd had sex; touched for the first time.
And when he next kissed her hand there was a plastic ring around it, gem sparkling with nothing more than devotion to sparkling, being nothing more than what it was. No more asked of it. And when he next made love to her she fell pregnant.
Love on a playground is a magical thing, but the playground is a dangerous place. One day it had rained - just for them, it only ever rained there just for them - and she slipped. And she fell. Losing the child.
The next time he kissed her forehead she was crying.
The next time he returned she wasn't there.
Maybe a wooden planked bridge between them?
He'd stolen her toy and she'd chased after it, but they froze when they stared into each others' eyes. Blushing cheeks and bruised elbows, awkward children with scabbed knees. Clumsy the way moths seem, in the candlelight. And they were strained once, when he fell, and her breath stopped along with her heart. Stopped like a television screen switched off, the soft sound of a small death, the picture vanishing and leaving only black nothing. But the sand cushioned his fall, and he gallantly stood up and grinned that grin with the lower-slightly-to-the-right tooth missing, and bowed, and she laughed that he was alright. Butterflies were in their stomachs and their nets, they caught them, studying them with the fascination, wonder and intensity they would lose and never regain as high school biology students. And the seasons changed, and they kissed for the first time at the bottom of the slide, listening to the rain fall on top of it. And they grew older and they changed a little but it never mattered. He pushed her on the swing. She was the tac between his tic and toe. They'd stumbled drunkenly off the merry go round, and he'd looked into those eyes again, reflecting the light of the street lamp nearby... and they'd had sex; touched for the first time.
And when he next kissed her hand there was a plastic ring around it, gem sparkling with nothing more than devotion to sparkling, being nothing more than what it was. No more asked of it. And when he next made love to her she fell pregnant.
Love on a playground is a magical thing, but the playground is a dangerous place. One day it had rained - just for them, it only ever rained there just for them - and she slipped. And she fell. Losing the child.
The next time he kissed her forehead she was crying.
The next time he returned she wasn't there.