Park-Bench Confessions

On a day grayer than me, I’m lying on my back on a chilly park bench, hogging it ‘cause there’s no one else around and let’s face it, I’m a lifelong victim of that miserable only-child mentality. I’ve got my nose plastered between the weathered pages of a Plath paperback, when a little boy in a sunny raincoat waddles up and whispers in a singsong way, Hey lady, I’ve got a secret.

I ignore him, refuse to indulge, hoping he’s old enough to take the hint, to go away and leave me alone. But he plows right through those social cues, tugs on my hoodie strings, and repeats himself.

Lady, didn’t you hear me? I’ve got a seee-cret. Don’t you wanna know?

I sigh, then turn to look at him and shake my head no, but I’ve got this sinking feeling he’s gonna tell me anyway.

His eyes go too-big-for-their-sockets wide, as he proceeds to check both sides, ensuring it’s just the two of us. Then he whispers:

Do you know what happens when we get old? Like really, really old?

“What,” I mouth, sarcastically, pretending not to know.

We die.

He utters that last syllable bombastically—spits it out with firework freshness, so much so that I swear I can see the concept of death colliding with his premature psyche, making its meteoric crater in the smooth terrain of his young and innocent mind.

The kid looks down at me with his head cocked, eyes glued to mine, waiting for the shock to land, trying to gauge whether or not I heard his revelatory confession.

I wait a minute before deciding to oblige him with a smirk and a rebuttal.

“Oh yeah? Then what?”

His face transforms into this taken-aback look—like I’ve gone and slapped him. The thought of “after” hadn’t occurred; not until now, anyway.

…Gee, I dunno.

“Me neither, kid. Me neither.”

Then he turns around and melts back into the sea of trees, leaving me to read in peace, while he strives to soften this new weight burdening his boyish heart—boisterously quacking at the mallards napping pondside; snapping any branch that dares to defy him; unearthing mossy boulders for no other reason than to see what slimy creatures reside beneath, piercing his thumbs with the spikiest thorns around, just to prove he’s got blood to bleed; only to wander off further into that land of precarious wonder, leaping right off the cliff of his dwindling childhood, winging his way through that ever-reaching sky, hooting with youth-ridden glee.

In the Throes of Console Woes

They’d been married a decade now, and for better or worse, the way he gamed was his least attractive attribute. Revolting, really. The furious button mashing, the forehead glistening, his stiff frame brimming with hostility. The groans, the moans, the thrown controllers. The feet stomping, the temper tantrums, the possessed muttering. They were one of those suspicious-from-the-outside-in childless couples, and she liked it like that…but not this. The way his hands bloomed in palms-up outrage whenever a boss got the better of him… as if waiting on a handout from the heavens. The way his pouty jaw clenched and popped, opening like a stiff little window every now and then, just to release some of the tension boiling within. Whenever he snatched his controller off the shelf, you could feel the walls sucking in and the plants huddling down and their already-anxious rescues cowering in the corner, bracing for impact. His unruly Xbox ways had their marriage feeling like a gallon of milk gone bad, and yeah, she was naïve, but never naïve enough to believe she could revive that which had soiled. The second the ease ceased, his mood would warp and decay, and he’d sit there as stern as could be, stewing in his rank pool of rotten vibes—a child, begrudging the world for refusing to yield. And despite such temperamental immaturity, she’d sit and console him. Rub his shoulders and scrub his scalp, applying the balm of her touch. She loved him—still. Never mind the aggressive tendencies, she couldn’t help herself. Over the years, she’d doled out many a talking-to and ultimatums aplenty—every manner of discipline that came to mind, really—but nothing ever worked; neither one knew how to power down.