Madison Cox the liminal space of children’s parks at night

The park is quiet with a new energy, one she didn’t know even existed before now. Different from the usual sound of little kids with their playthings as leaves rustled in the trees. She remembers sitting on the green plastic tire swing with her friends, back when they were all small enough to fit together. Things change so easily, she thinks. Everyone’s a little bit taller, a little bit wider, a little bit older. They leave the tire swings and bloodied knees behind. Adults don’t cry when they scrape their knees—they hardly even scrape them at all. Everything feels different when illuminated by street lights rather than sunlight. Like the lights are ready to hold every secret known to man. Not a single word spoken here would ever see the light of day. The thought comforts her, and she lets her shoulders sink a little with loosened breath.

She doesn’t want to see the look on his face, so she keeps her eyes down. “It’s weird, thinking about all the different people I’ve been.” She kicks her legs idly as she sits on the swing set, letting the toes of her shoes catch on the pebbles beneath her. “I’m not the same person I was six months ago, but six-months-ago me is still inside right-now me, making right-now me complicated in her own ways. I become complicated,” she watches her own feet on the ground. “People become complicated.” “People are always complicated,” he says. “And I always wonder what makes them,” she explains. Her toes are swallowed as she

stills.

“Lots of things,” he begins, “but you don’t have to know all of it.” “I like understanding other people.” “No one owes you explanations for who they are. People are just people.” “Yeah,” she sighs, “I know they don’t.” Silence swallows them whole, surrounded by cricket chirps and rustles of leaves. Neither of them really know what they’re talking about anymore. A little bit of nothing and everything all at once. She keeps her eyes down for fear that she’ll meet his if she looks up. It was much easier to admit things to people when she couldn’t see how they looked at her—when she couldn’t see how their faces changed after. His car is parked in front of them, a reminder that he still has to take her home. She wonders what time it is and checks her phone—nearly one in the morning now. Neither of them had meant to stay out this long, but it was easy to get carried away in each other’s words. “We can leave, if you want,” she says to the silence, an almost ashamed mumble. He stands and walks away wordlessly in the direction of his car, and she knows to follow. She watches his feet as they leave and return to the ground. Soon, she will be at home, sitting alone in her room and regretting every word she said tonight.

Soon, she reminds herself. Not right now. Right now, she rolls the windows down without asking for permission, and he lets her. He lets her play her own music and makes no attempts to hide the way his fingers tap at the steering wheel with it. Right now, the wind tangles her hair and makes her skin feel grubby, and she lets it. She revels in the feeling of it between her fingertips, making waves with her arm as it hangs from the door.

The time feels like it goes on forever, but it was easy to be misled. It was better not to worry about the forever, anyway. Things get complicated that way. She’s beginning to wonder if things themselves are what can be so complicated, or if it’s people who make things that way. Her favorite song comes on and she glances at him, his eyes still to the road. Good, she thinks. She allows herself to stop thinking about all the complicated parts for a moment, settling herself into the passenger seat and falling in love with the song all over again, the same way she does every time it plays. In this moment, it’s much easier to just make room for the simple things; it helps her breathe that way. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath through her nose. She opens them again when the lyrics begin, the words easily shaping themselves at her mouth without a sound. The good simple feeling swallows her in its warmth. This stays between her and the streetlights.