She took the kids to Briarwood park hoping she wouldn’t meet anyone she knew. She needed to be alone—and think. In summer she had brought the children here to swim, so she knew there was a small playground with monkey-bars and swings near the woods.
It was a park frequented mostly by immigrant families.
No one was around. She sat on the railroad tie while her kids climbed and slid. It was early November, a warm sunny day. The trees were yielding halfheartedly to the short days and coming winter; they still clung to a lot of green. Yet the ground was bathed in brown withered leaves.
Her heart felt like the leaves. Absent-mindedly she scooped some up and crushed them into brown flakes, almost powdery. She watched the breeze waft them away.
It seemed like her heart was disintegrating.
Despite the threat of winter, the sun was bright and cheerful, the sky a mystic blue. Her children jumped and laughed behind her.
She peered into the shadows of the woods and wished she could lose herself. She wished she could disintegrate into the soil, into the loam under the layer of fallen leaves, while the trees grew silently above her.