The woodchips molder at my base, tingeing my cheery scarlet plastic the color of blood. Insects and grubs slither among the organic waste – reclaiming, they believe, their kingdom. The wind chases itself through my hollow passages, for want of other options. The sun frowns overhead, pulsing with an unspoken rage. If I had a touch of poetry, I’d borrow from Verlaine, a man capable of conjuring autumn austerity out of high summer.

I heard about that particular lyricist from one of the mothers – not one of the PTA warriors or the hesitant foreign brides or the minivan marauders – a sloppy-ponytail-and-hoodie model doing an expensive and, she said, “pointless” MA. She read aloud en français while her little Quinn dared the sodden monkey bars and promptly broke her ulna. But the verse stayed with me. And it sings in me now, reverberating through my plastic shell.

Quinn isn’t here.

Neither is Hank, or Sara, or Elizabeth with those great grey-green eyes. Nor is Gio, or Morgan, or any of the other screeching, thumping, half-feral...

…glorious…

…children.

They left on a drizzling Friday in March, huddled against their parents’ waists, clutching hastily assembled packets of worksheets that drooped in the damp. How could I know, then, that their scuffing sneakers and shrill delighted voices would vanish?

And who knows when they will come back again?

It’s raining, now; teardrop shapes evanesce on each of my abandoned faces.

Je me souviens de jours anciens et je pleure.

Linda McMullen is a wife, mother, diplomat, and homesick Wisconsinite. Her short stories and the occasional poem have appeared in over seventy literary magazines.