The Swing That Waits for Ghosts

In the corner of a deserted park
stands a rusted swing,
its chains blistered with time,
its seat hollowed by the weight
of vanished childhoods.

Once, it knew the gospel of laughter—
shrieks of joy echoing against the sky,
feet kicking the air as though
to bruise the clouds,
tiny palms gripping the iron ropes
with the faith that falling
was only part of flying.

It remembers the child
with scraped knees and wild hair,
the one who believed the horizon
was only a push away,
the one who leaned so far back
that the world flipped upside down,
and everything dangerous felt holy.

Now silence nests in its joints.
It creaks not from motion,
but from longing.
Each gust of wind tries to mimic
the rhythm of play,
but the air cannot weigh itself down
with laughter,
cannot curl into the shape of innocence.

The swing waits.
It waits for the return of small hands,
for sneakers dragging grooves into dirt,
for a voice that once sang
to the rhythm of gravity.
But the child has grown—
has traded scraped knees for broken hearts,
muddy palms for weary hands,
freedom for the invisible chains of time.

And still, the swing remains.
It does not weep,
does not rage at abandonment.
It only keeps its stories—
a reliquary of fleeting summers,
a monument to the fleeting kind of freedom
that can be remembered,
but never recaptured.

At night, under the moon,
it moves gently by itself,
not with ghosts,
but with memory—
a rusted cradle rocking softly,
as if the child never left,
as if growing up
were only a rumor.

- Khushi Kaul