5.02 / February 2010

CALLOW MONSTER

Rain had gurgled in the gutters outside your window the night before, the earth swelling around the duplex you share with your mother while you thought hideous thoughts.   Now you plod home through soggy mud porridge because your high school is only eight blocks away.   You near the elementary school where kids are still out in the playground, chasing each other under the after-storm sun in the midst of this wet, humid spring.   Your eyes are drawn to a group playing tag, mostly girls in shorts, the fury of their legs digging into the wood chips, kicking them up with desperation as they flee from their pursuer, a heavy red-headed boy that reminds you of a slow classic monster, The Mummy or Frankenstein.   Though the top layer of wood chips is dried out, those pieces dug up from the children’s shoes are dark and moist, dirt clinging to them.   Small wet slivers stick to the girls’ smooth legs revealed by their shorts, the dark specks on their pale skin.   And you watch it, place your hands on the chain-link fence between you and them, short and thin, a fragile barrier supported by your self-control.   You watch the legs, the running, their scissor motion, collecting more and more dirt.   You’re barely able to hear their pure laughter, untainted by perverse joking or curses, too young to know the words you know.   Your hands rub the fence.   You want to wipe their legs off for them, clean them, your palms and fingers on their legs until every wood chip is gone.


5.02 / February 2010

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