The wind is brisk on this fall day, the sun low, turning the grassy lawn into green streaks of light. The trees, with fragile leaves trembling tenuously against the molten sky, reach their black limbs up and outwards. The park is silent, except for a few lone cries of a dog and the rustling of the wind, catching up the leaves and flinging them headlong towards some unknown, unseen end. The empty swings swing wildly and uncontrollably up to the sky and back down again, hitting my leg. The chains rattle and shake, with no tiny hands to grasp and conquer them. I sit on one, gently, my legs relaxed so that I sway back and forth. My hair has exploded all over my face, getting caught in my mouth and blinding my eyes. I push it back and look around me, letting the wind caress my cheeks. The sky has turned darker, the rolling clouds threatening rain. The damp mulch looks so much darker than it used to – grayer, somehow, older, which it probably is. I remember trying to walk on the mulch without shoes, almost a rite of five-year-old passage, the “ouch” that accompanied each step and the splinters that inevitably followed. And yet, it wasn't painful, or at least we pretended that it wasn't. It was a testament to toughness.

I take off my shoes and socks and slowly get up from my swinging seat. My feet are no longer calloused and hardened – they have become soft from days of abiding within dirty converses, or more recently, pinching pumps. After a few steps I give up, collapsing on a bench. I remember bringing my book to read on this bench while watching my siblings, the words dancing before my eyes under the bright sun.

There are no children on the play equipment now, so after returning my feet to their proper place inside my boots, I climb up the stairs to the slide. One of the two slides is a tunnel, a thrilling spectacle at one time, and the other a two seater. My feet almost reach the bottom of the tunnel slide, my fingers losing feeling as they slide along the smooth, cold walls. After depositing myself at the bottom, I climb into the right side of the two seater. My long legs dangle, my blue jeans contrasting sharply with the orange plastic. I remember a small picture that hung in my room for a long time. I was seated on this slide, my best friend beside me. I wore a floppy denim hat with a large yellow sunflower on it. I'm glad my tastes have changed, I think, smiling. A slight drizzle begins and so I slide down and run across the playground, past the swings, to the bandshell. I sit down indian style on the rough, tan cement. I breathe heavily. I haven't run in a long time, except to catch the train at 5:30 on a Monday morning.

I look around. It looks much the same as it always has, with a few more graffiti. Not the big, puffy, artistic graffiti but the middle school graffiti of “Sally and Sarah were here” or “I heart Nick Jonas.” I grow cold from sitting and so I pace, remembering the numerous plays that we, the Second Ave kids, put on for our, or rather my, long-suffering parents. The card games and jumping contests that took place here... I smile and sigh. I remember how we performed “I'm a Little Teapot” after learning about theater for a week during the summer. I was young enough to get into it, but old enough to feel a slight tinge of embarrassment. I sigh again. Where are those kids now? Kendra still lives next door and when we chanced to meet, engages in superfluous small talk. Sophie, after her parents' separation has been rarely seen nor heard from; the only news of her comes through her father, at one time garrulous, now reticent. So much has changed. The small children I babysat unrecognizable or absent completely. The dingy green shop where we got 50 cent snow cones in the summer replaced by shiny stores with even shinier merchandise. The library finally achieved its expansion, and with it new staff to shepherd another generation through eighth grade English. Only this old park remains relatively untouched. But even it isn't the sun-strewn palace of my childhood summer days. It claims not to know me, bids me leave. The wind howls and the rain sweeps through the bandshell, dampening my cheeks. The wooden seats of the audience empty – there is no one to see, nor care, as a tear slides down my cheek.