She visits the playground almost every day. A lone swing stirs, and she knows it for what it is: a sign from her son that he’s still here, maybe not so that she can touch skin-to-skin, maybe not so she can breathe in tuna fish, sweat, and red licorice, but not gone either.

Once the playground was a vibrant place, crammed full of parked strollers and bags of Cheerios. Her son darted from the swing set to the sandbox to the covered green plastic slide that curved into a sudden drop.  The other children grew up, started driving, went to college or work. The new crop of parents, calling the playground a death trap, petitioned for a safer area for their children, a place away from the woods, a place with rounded edges and soft landings. It’s never crowded here anymore.

When she first returned to the playground, her son’s voice was loud, screaming, sometimes in joy, sometimes in pain. She could barely stand to listen. But then, after a few months, he became less frantic, and she could just watch him play again, laughing on the seesaw, boisterous on the monkey bars.

Sometimes he said mommy, mommy, mommy, push me higher, mommy.

But then, each year, something was taken away.

First, the sandbox was removed, and a Northern Red Oak planted in its place. As it got taller, resplendent in its height and solid fortitude, she would stand in its shade. Even she could admit that it was beautiful.

But it also meant one less place for her son to play.

The monkey bars were next, then the slide, the seesaw, then the red-orange-and-blue merry-go-round. His voice got quieter, a whisper now and then, a muffled sob, a whistle.

All that remains is an empty basketball court, weeds peeking through the breaks in the concrete floor. And the swings, always the swings, the last place she saw him, the swings, her little boy, pumping his fat rosy legs.

– Anna Stolley Persky