The playground

Darkness falls at a faster rate now, and a crisp blanket spreads across the streets, creating a thin layer of frozen beauty across the muddy puddles. Walking over a section of grass you can feel the pleasurable crunch underneath your shoes as the miniscule ice crystals shatter and crumble.

Small children can be seen randomly scattered across the streets, some with small twigs clasped between two fingers and exhaling deeply letting their warm breath turn to a dull mist in the cold atmosphere; mimicking smokers was fun for them.

And who could blame them?

There was nothing much else for them to do when they were shoved out onto the street by their mothers to play by themselves. There was a council-built playground of course, a host of chains and concrete in the rain, but that was quickly occupied by a junkie. He sleapt under the slide with a coat draped over his legs claiming as much shelter as possible.

It was a child who found him there, unconscious on his back with his head tilted to the side and a sticky stream of saliva dangling from his lower lip. If you looked closely you could see where the tears had been; a clear path etched amongst the filth upon his face made it quite obvious. But this alone was not enough to scare the young child; perhaps he had seen it all before? Such a sight was all too common in these areas. But he looked past the junkie’s face to where the coarse brown fabric had been carefully rolled up past his elbow. A long thin needle protruded from a blue vein, leading to a half full syringe of black tar heroin. The needle had slipped a bit and a small trickle of blood ran down his forearm.

The position of the needle was vulgar and horrifying, all of its weight seemed to dangle on the inner lining of the vein. The man had supposedly planned to let the first half kick in, and then finish it off enjoying all of its pleasures in a drowsy state of satisfaction. But judging by the empty glass bottle of vodka protruding from his pocket, he wasn’t in any state of mind to think this through. The teaspoon lay in the other hand, tarnished and charred from where the lighter had repeatedly softened the sticky black mass.

The child didn’t scream. Nor did he run away. He didn’t even cry. He just stared. His eyes absorbed every detail, every crease in the man’s clothing, every withered aspect of his face.

And then he left. He walked away. He hadn’t tried to wake the man up or poke him with a stick, he left him there with whatever shred of dignity an unconscious junkie in a playground could retain. The child walked home and didn’t say a word. He was unusually quiet, but that was all.

They didn’t find the junky until the next day. This time the scene had changed a little. This time the needle was empty, and it wasn’t clear whether the non-too-silver spoon had been used again or not. This time the man’s feet were blue, and the life had been drained from his body. Dried blood accompanied the band of saliva now, staining the unshaven skin around his mouth and nose. He had propped himself up against a metal railing and his eyes were fixed half open and empty, staring at the ground.

This man was dead.

He wasn’t a bad man. Do you really think this was his choice of life? Somewhere along the way, something went wrong, and some mother’s son was too weak to fight back. The sun sets on a grave that no one will visit and a life that no one will remember.

And tomorrow, the sun will rise again, and the world will keep on turning.