Michigan Park

By: A. Arrieta

The girl spread her arms across the soft grass. Her hands grasped the blades tightly, as if she was hanging upside down over black oblivion. She wanted to sink into the grass, like she used to, and let the breeze skim over her like it was a brush painting her over the ground. But now, instead of the ground warmly wrapping itself around her, she was clinging to it desperately, as if it was her only hope.

She remembered those warm days of spring, when her father pulled her in the red wagon, her small head delightfully bobbing up and down with the bumps on the sidewalk. Every Sunday after church, he would pull the little red wagon, filled with blankets, storybooks, and this toddler, two blocks down from their house to Michigan Park. To him, the park was a mere weekend hobby that provided relief from the misery of adulthood. But to her, the park was a world within itself, full of an immanent sense of life, which took its form in the wind that brushed through the trees and her hair. The park was everything. It mattered more to her than vanilla ice cream cones, or Dr. Seuss, or tomato soup with crackers, which were all considerably important things to her then. The park was an adventure, full of the warm grass she could land on when she stumbled.

The trees were her jungle, and the playground her pirate ship; but her favorite place in the park was the hill. She spent most of her time racing up it with her father, and rolling down. She would roll in an endless stream and let the rhythm of spinning calm her spirit. It was in these dizzy moments that the world made sense, wrapping its warm arms around her, as images of blue and green flew by.

The girl thought of this now, as she took off her hat and let her bare head rest on the grass. She embedded the soles of her feet into the grass and breathed out. The world did not move in that smooth circle any more, but in a violent whirl of surgeries, medication, and chemo. The simplicity that had once driven her had retired to a mere corner in her subconscious. Above her the leaves of a maple tree fell, reminding her of the constant falling motion of a life that is slipping away.

However, right in that moment, all she knew was Michigan Park, as the world turned upright and she let the grass wrap itself around her.