@rush

She pushed him with two fingers at first, lightly, as if the swing might refuse them both. The chains were wet from the rain. His sneakers flashed toward her and away again, the bottoms gone gray from the dusty playground, which now turned muddy. Each time he came back he laughed in silence, as if the air had taken it. Then she pushed again. He did not shout, nor did he seem to want to go higher. She felt something old in herself open, the one between being twenty-four and being a mother of a three-year-old, wanting to be looked at and wanting to disappear. Her son leaned back against the seat, not from trust, but from the pull of motion, his small body giving itself to the swing. The light shifted, the park emptied and refilled, damp turned to chill, her body numbed, but she met each change as if for the first time. He comes forward, she pushes, he swings out, he comes back. The park still belongs to afternoon. A stroller wheel drags through wet gravel, a father shakes rain from the hood of his sweatshirt, the smell of mulch lifts where the ground has begun to dry. Her fingers slip on the chains. They are colder now than they were before, though she does not seem to notice. His shoes keep finding the same dull shine as they swing toward her, then away. Once, a woman glances over as she gathers her daughter from the slides, then glances again, as if trying to place what is unusual. The woman leaves, and the swing keeps moving. He comes forward. She pushes. He comes forward, she pushes, he goes out, he comes back. The voices thin first. Then the traffic beyond the fence changes from the flat rush of day to the separate passing of cars she can almost count, but again fails to notice. The damp in her sweatshirt turns clammy, then simply becomes her skin. He comes forward. She pushes. As the moon slips behind the clouds, the chill of dark arrives, while the chains remain in motion, all throughout the night. He comes forward, she pushes, he goes out, he comes back. At dawn, police enter the park. A resident had called to report that a young woman had been pushing a toddler on a swing "for an unusually long period of time." One officer moved toward the swing as if to stop it. The child had been dead for forty-two hours.

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