The Lisbon Playground

This is a time where I’m reminiscing about summertime as it starts to get chillier, and the air starts to change. This is how I was feeling and what I was thinking as I looked out the window of a balcony in Lisbon on my first night in Europe. I hope it takes you out of your winter blues and puts you in a summer mood! 

The old slide was fading, its red paint, which was fresh years ago, peeled off and left scrappy—remnants of what once was. It’s funny how the past can turn into a weapon. Luckily, there’s nothing to touch the slide now but the vines. There was once a whole playground here, a striking show of little sprigs of life. Kids would run through the mulch and race up those same stairs, tiny sparkles in their eyes. They’d worry their parents, as they raced as if their feet held wings and as if their bodies could not be destroyed. The steps were not carefully watched as they ran. The railings were things to avoid. They pretended that the hands of time were on their side, gently guiding them and holding them as they lived foolishly and brightly. They held little rays of light in their palms. A swing set stood almost too close to the slide, it clicked and clanked and creaked as people went by. It was once a place of life (of another kind), a place of humanity. Borrowed and sought, this space was once a place of gathering. A place where kids would meet and find they liked the same things. Toy cars and bubbles, ribbons and clouds were once littered all over this same ground. They would talk and pretend that life wasn’t how it seemed. Imaginations of vague regression and pretensions of beautiful things.  As the day wound down and the sun got lower, the kids would leave to go to sleep. But the playground was never truly empty. At night, teenagers would come out of their thoughts, called back to the same place they’d been years before. Trading cigarettes and sorrows. Trading joints and tales of tomorrow. Holding the swings with something less than joy (little rays of light, slightly dimmer). They’d talk about the past and the future. They’d swing high into the sky and pretend the stars could be touched, pretend that time wasn’t rooting against them, that life wasn’t rooting against us. They’d kiss and they’d smile and they’d cry. Their emotions were finetuned and filled with the sighs of growing up. The playground was a place to hold all variations of humanity. A single sphere for existing, a meeting place, the spot, the nostalgic memory. A place for all the varieties of life. And even when it was too late, when the moon was too high in the sky for anyone to be awake, those who couldn’t sleep (the sleepwalkers of the world) would watch from their balcony as the moon shone down on the metal slide reflecting a barely perceived light. Isn’t it strange how we can’t see how bright something is, until it’s right in front of our face? 

 A little house lays gently by the playground, with a carved out door and terracotta roof. It was blissfully held within arm’s reach of the slide (or so it seems from up here).  I’m sure kids lived there once, but they’ve all flown away. The house stays still, not breathing as it did, static in its lonely space. The playground is now full of life. Just in a different way. It’s a different kind of bright now. The swing set is covered with bright green vines holding flowers from their stems. The metallic slide that touched so many people’s hands will soon disappear into this sea of vines, this sea of plant limbs. This place which held so much life has now disappeared. It’s only seen now as a single slide which towers and fights against the hands of time. The vines have overrun the rest of the square. They’ve covered most of the touches (from sticky fingerprints to dirty shoes) they’ll all be dust, soon. They’ve faded as the moon fades, falling and falling farther into the grip of time. What will we do when they all fade into the dust? The memories will be put into the vines hands and all that will remain are the things which have lived far longer than us. They’ll live far longer than these memories, they’ll cover them and watch as they fade. A different kind of life will remain, the playground will still be covered with blossomed green vines touching the sky, as the sky mixes with the earth to create quite a sight, for no one to see.