Summer

You squeeze your eyes shut. The color of you see is almost black. As you relax your eyes and let in more light, the color lightens to magenta, then a dark, warm red. You hear the sound of creaking metal as you swing backward and tuck your striped leggings underneath the plastic seat. The calluses on your hands protect you from blisters as you grasp the metal chains holding you up, but they don't stop the chains from pinching you. Ouch! You grab another bit of the chain, one with smooth plastic on it. Your eyes are still shut, but you can see the red is changing to orange. As the swing reverses direction, you throw your legs out in front of you and lean back, letting your hair brush the tickling grass and hairy poppy plant behind you. A giggle escapes your chest. You lean further back and smile toothily, let the whole world around you see the big gap where your front tooth used to be. Orange changes to yellow, than yellowish green. The swing keeps going forward, back, creak, forward, back, creak... as you continue to pump your legs, going higher and higher. You could be an astronaut and be flying past the moon now. Or you could be a bird and have feathery wings to take you to the sky. You let your eyes open a little more and you can see the tiniest ray of sunlight, turned skinny and long like a needle. You look away from the sun because you remember that it hurts to look at it fully. Plus, your sister told somebody was blinded, and you don't want that to happen. Instead you let your eyes see the azure sky, an ocean with no waves or ships, a portal to outer space. The atmosphere. Ten thousand feet up there is a white stripe and an airplane, and if the people flying to Seattle looked just right, they would see you, a little dot swinging far down below near a little toy house that's too small to even play with. The sky is just so blue in summer.