"The Playground" by Seth Rosenbloom

The Playground

I.
A teenager sits on the broad windowsill
three floors up. He holds a plastic cup filled
with Fireball whiskey on his third day of freshman year. 

Because the night is warm
and the window is open wide
voices spill to the courtyard below.

A streetlamp bathes the brick, his back
faces the world. The window frames the void beyond
his shoulders. A gap wide enough for someone’s son to fall out of.

When he was a boy, he climbed
with my son to the top of the jungle gym.
And when I looked away, he leapt or fell to the mulched ground.

II.
The boy’s father raises money
for surgeries and rehab, makes demands of the university because
drinking is beside the point—the sills are deep and tempting for students to sit on.

In the hospital he’s stuffed with tubes.
A bandage wraps his skull. And I remember
how mulch sticks to warm skin and digs into small hands—

chips of wood, blond and coarse
not yet browned soft by a season of rain.
Splintered under fingernails. Still alive with the smell of pine.

Seth Rosenbloom

Seth Rosenbloom is a poet and consultant to companies on leadership and management. His poems have appeared in ONE ART, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Evening Street Review, CutBank Online, and other publications. Seth was born in Washington DC and lives in Seattle.

Headshot: Kate Hailey

Headshot Credit: Staff