Someone in the playground told Billy he has a face like a marímbula so he grew up and bought a new face. Someone threw a clump of sand and a solitary grain has lodged in Sally’s left eye. She will fall in love with an ophthalmologist and it will endure until she notices what is written in his eyes. Someone in the playground is yelling and his uvula is violently shaking. He will become a man who curses on breakfast television. Someone in the playground has a paperchain of wishes that he hides under his bed because trampled wishes can’t come through. Someone in the playground is screaming ‘can I kill you?’ which is better manners than the playground is used to.
Billy rules the playground that is adult life. He’s tropical without the temperate. He’s renowned for breaking and entering other’s games and howls when he starts each hunt. Sally presents as a tall stem of a woman but only a select few humans know she feels hollow. She hasn’t rekindled her love story and has reluctantly come to the conclusion that she may never again burst into flower. It’s easy to judge why Eddie swears with such abandon but life is hard when you feel like you’re a dense mass of tangles. Josh is one of life’s thinkers. He’s a grazer, he eavesdrops. He has a bald patch on the top of his head that he attributes to his father’s hand. He wonders about everything and that shouldn’t always but it does make him happy. Someone in the playground feels endangered and the narrative will be that they weren’t once but later became a danger to you. Someone in the playground or perhaps everyone will encourage you to chase the true dexterity of your life.
Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in English Literature. Her work has most recently appeared in X-R-A-Y, Frazzled Lit Magazine and Bending Genres.You can find out more on X @abairrud2021 and Bluesky catherineobrien.bsky.social.
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