Coin/cOIN

A sickening thud,
Looking around, she
holds on to her jacket sleeve
tightly, wondrously
afraid and unmoving, there
in the corner, the noise
a rolling, rustling now;
uneven and distorted, like
the moaning of some mechanical animal,
injured and seeking a place to hide its frame,

She stares into the abyss, the
swelling darkness, exhaling
and realizing she had forgotten to breathe,
something was there, the sound
continued to mount, closer it tumbled
on and on,
moving yet unmoving,
trapped in the corner, yet
the sound was all over the room,

desolate and unknown, she
grabbed at her sleeve once more, harder
digging her fingers into the thin fabric,
cracking under the weight of her fear;

****************************************************

I sat hunched over
and my legs pressed together
in the swing too small and
the chain creaking as it swung almost
un-noticeably back and forth
and my feet dragging like a boy's
upon the mulch that had been ground to
dirt under years of playing children
thinking about that girl,

Her hair smelling sweetly in the summer breeze
too beautiful to tell her how I felt
and she laughed at the unspoken words
that sat in my stomach and made me sick
and she grabbed my hand pulling me forward
so that we ran into the field of flowers and
the field yellow and pink and green
and smelling almost as sweetly as her,

The sky blue and solid above us
the pollen blowing in the breeze
and her dress dancing around her as she laughed
pulling me behind her and saying something
I could not hear over the rustling of the wind,

And I sat there on the swing,
watching the children play, looking
once or twice over at the old man on the swing,
and I was happy for them.