strawberry swing

i am in a playground an unfamiliar park. it is daytime. i am sitting on a swing, going back and forth, back and forth...on my right is another swing going in the other direction.

on it is a baby boy, no more than a couple months old. its old enough to be able to grab onto the chains, and old enough to actually appreciate this enjoyable activity. i know this because he is smiling and giggling to himself. i smile to myself as am i looking at him.

i get carried away by the happiness he created and start to swing faster. this is fun. i am reaching higher heights with each push, rocketing up and down, my shoes carving troughs in the sand with each pass. the baby is also trying to go faster, and he does so quickly; and something bad happens. he cant seem to hold on. hes thrown from the swing, and he lands facedown 20 feet from the sandbox, on hard concrete.

i appear next to him...to it. its not a baby boy anymore. its a foetus smaller than my last finger. it has hair, and a face, and tiny hands and wiry legs, it has all of those, but it has no breath. i know it is dead now. a crowd of adults gather, and they see a dead creature down on the ground in front of them and all they do is look, and they mumble amongst themselves, and they point, and they shake their heads, and their brows are furrowed but they are far away. im close by, kneeling,  proning. im next to this dead human being for no practical reason. i want to pick it up but i dont. theres nothing i can do.

nothing except stay close to it during its last moment--because i feel for it and because i am the only one who does and because i am the only one who can--therefore i must.

every single one of those adults, they think they know but they dont. they think they are special but they are the same. they speak of laws but have no virtues. they give solutions to problems that do not exist. they talk when nobody listens. they fumble when all they need to do is keep still and stay silent: every single one of those adults: i despise them all.

i wake up, and i decide that i can learn more from a dead baby than from ten grown humans.