Scuffed

The swingset creaks under our weight while the slack chains creak in the rising Oklahoma wind and the moon strains to be seen through a low blanket of clouds.

My toes stretch, bare, too cold, soles scuffed from our barefoot midnight walk, longing for the nearest branch with its splash of newborn green, its nursery of leaves yawning and unfurling after their winter nap.

The air smells like electricity, like change, like life borne on the wind, or on the wings of great flights of birds come back from the southlands to weigh down the lines that make our computers and telephones and fluorescent lights work nonstop, all the time, forever.

Your shadow is long underneath the street light, and the gusts tug at your trenchcoat, crying anachronism, and threaten to pull you away like some kind of backwards Marry Poppins into the night.

The currents make dimples in the black skin of your umbrella and its handle twists against your palm, willing you to let yourself go as the first few fat drops splash in your hair, on your nose, on your forehead, and cling to your eyelashes.

We all laugh in different languages and mouth silent goodbyes to the chalk effigies on the sidewalks, and suddenly the air is ten degrees cooler and the sirens start humming to tell us yes – this is the front.

What I love about this season is all of the destruction and the renewal, and the way the rivulets and the puddles take the stinging heat from my scuffed soles.