No Place Like Home

Reminiscences of a bygone time

The sun was warm on his face. He tilted his wrinkled face up and smiled. Days like this were rare, now. Things hadn't always been this way; there was a time when these days seemed like they would stretch on forever...

Once upon a time this park had been a wilderness of discovery for boys and girls who had barely seen a decade on this earth, bigger boys and girls and who were starting to recognize each other as boys and girls. Girlfriends, boyfriends, lovers— this park had been the very definition of exploration.

The old man tilted his head back down and opened his eyes. The twinkle of adolescent revelation was gone. The twinkling he saw now was not off a pretend pistol in the hands of a pretend cowboy; it was just glare from the broken glass of a long-discarded beer bottle in the weedy south parking lot where two young men in a battered old Ford took turns inhaling from a short glass pipe.

A rattle startled him from his reverie. An old lady pushed a bent shopping cart past him, one wheel squeaking in a painful rhythm. She pushed her cart to where a dirt path led back into what had once been a tidy hedge but was now a tangle of bramble and shrub.

On the far side of the walking path, another old man drooled over a half-empty bottle of cheap booze, one shoe with no lace wagging its tongue in resignation. The playground equipment in the center of the park leaned in desultory abandonment.

The man pulled his ratty jacket around himself, turned his face back up to the sun, and closed his eyes. Things hadn't always been this way.

Once upon a time, he hadn't had to call this park his home.

NOTES: ▶︎

Word Count: 300
Submitted for "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge" 
Prompt: Use the words sun, wheel, shoe