Empty Backyard Desperately Awaits Another Ring Dunk Season

Agony. Loneliness. Emptiness.
This is all that I have felt for months. This is all I know.

Yet, last month, something changed. Wooden pallets were tenderly placed upon me. I hadn’t been touched like that in years. It was electrifying. A banner was hung up on my fence. Lights were strewn about me. I was illuminated — every brick of my simple fire pit, every blade of browning grass, every inch of plastic foldable chair delicately stroked by glistening, gentle light. 

Then it happened. I was suddenly filled – covered with the soles of shoes and the energy of new beginnings. Music wafted over me, the beats pulsing through me. Before I knew it, the sweet, savory taste of fermented grains seeped through the cracks of the pallets and into my soil. I tasted it like an infant tasting its mother’s milk for the first time. I could almost discern the lingering taste of gold and the sense of accomplishment. I thought to myself, “Is this rebirth? Is this new life?”

And then, just like that, it was over. Thin, plastic ponchos were all that was left, tossed haplessly in a corner. The feet departed. The music faded out. The lights dimmed. I was alone. 

“Surely, this is just a pause,” I thought. “This moment of vivacity couldn’t be just a cruel taste of freedom, could it?”

But it was. The blades of grass beneath the pallets have decomposed into my soil. The plastic ponchos have gathered mold. The music has never returned. The foldable chairs in the corner are my only sign of life, and they, too, are beginning to fall apart. That ethereal feeling slowly fades with the glow of every passing headlight –– the only contact with the world that I still have each night.

Nothing remains now. I have nothing; I am nothing. Sometimes, as the sun begins to set and the shadows of night appear, I find my mind wandering to that night of exuberant joy, thinking I hear music in the distance. My only hope is in a new season, a new cause for celebration. But will the fulfillment of this hope ever come? I can only dream.

 

—t.u.kulele