In the tall grass, in the fading sun, antiquated remains of childhood are almost buried. The rusty metal bars of what once was a swing set stands like a headstone. Can you hear the creak of the chains that were once here? Broken bits of pavement might still be found under the wild snarled weeds and layers of earth that have with dyspathy overtaken it.

The merry-go-round was here, you can feel the impression like a sunken grave. And over there, tangled in the vines and trees you can see the decaying remnants of what was a slide. Now just hunks of twisted metal, bowed like a feeble old man, a shadow of its former self. The skeletal remains of what might have been monkey bars or a teeter totter have been entombed by nature out there with it.

Decades ago, something dwelled here but now only silence resides. This was once the site of a school playground but now it’s only a tomb, my tomb.

I can occasionally hear the echoes of a child playing or a teacher weeping coming from somewhere among the scattered bricks and debris but I cannot interact. I cannot leave my grave. There’s not much of me to be found here, buried under the cracked pavement, maybe a piece of my leather shoes or a link of my silver bracelet.

I’ve been here waiting to be found since the year the playground was built. My killer, just a boy then himself, put me in the shallow earth. I watched as the pavers went over my body, totally unaware of my presence. I watched as he finished school here, no one suspecting what he had done. I heard children whispering about his death in a car accident years later. He died without anyone knowing I was here.

My parents passed decades ago, I felt their grief the years they lived without me, never realizing how close I actually was.. Only one person alive remembers me, my baby sister and it is for her I am waiting. She lives in a house across the field, riddled with dementia, sometimes she waves at me or calls my name. She knows I am here. There’s a nurse with her all the time now. I suspect I won’t have to wait much longer. When she is ready, we will leave this place together and I will escape my tomb forever.