His Easy Grace

She had not intended her impulsive walk to the park to be a reflection on love lost. But as it was windy and raining, and as the loss was fresh and raw and constantly in the forefront of her mind, she should have known it would turn out that way.
The park was very large and very green with grass and pine trees, which was normal, but at the moment it was also empty, and while she knew she would have felt lonelier if it had been crowded, it also seemed very sad. She had gravitated toward the swings when she still thought this would be a casually fun walk, and now she was pumping away methodically as if swinging was some arduous but important task she was assigned. She was a very serious person.
Gradually a bright afternoon image from a year before overtook the rainy one. The Thursday of the first week, after school, two boys took turns jumping, or flying, off the swings; the first flailed to the ground and, grinning, held up a fan of pine needles he had obtained from the adjacent tree. "I got a souvenir!" As the second boy soared through the air a loud crack split the air. He dropped gracefully onto his feet holding a 7 foot long branch, held it aloft, and said, "I got a souvenir." She remembered trying very hard not to consciously think that she loved him. Then she timed them both running an obstacle course on the play structure, which the man she wouldn't admit she loved won. His friend accused her of being biased, which she denied vehemently, but the accusation thrilled her because it implied a tie of some kind between she and him; later she found out that the whole thing was his characteristically confident attempt to win her love and the friend was being accommodating by saying this. Then, tired - for he didn't take care of himself whatsoever back then - he sat on the bench she was perched on the back of and leaned on her leg and it was impossible to keep the silly, childish thought that she loved him after only four days out of her head.
Presently the lurching motion of swinging made her sick and she dragged her toes through the tan bark to stop. She would only hurt herself if she tried to jump.
Her over-sized sleeves hung limply over her hands as she walked. Because they rubbed against the fabric, the tips of her fingers became oddly hot, but as she looked out over the vast sea of soggy grass between her and her destination, it seemed like far too much trouble to push up her sleeves. Here was the place they had laid together after spending a torturous week apart; there was the tree he had climbed, provoking admiration at his efficient grace. Even recognizing that it was irrational, she liked to think that this park belonged only to her and her love, and she couldn't help believing it on the deepest, most basic level.
Upon reaching the tree they sat and talked in for hours on the Monday of the first week, an isolated tree in the middle of the broad field that offered privacy among the leaves, an island of the wild and the pure in the middle of the suburb, she was surprised to discover that it was very near a fence. Jarringly, she now noticed this obtrusion in all of her memories there. The bark was dark with rain and currently constellations of small white flowers graced the branches. One large horizontal branch had been cut off and she thought it was the one he had swung to the ground from, with easy grace and only one hand, but she wasn't sure. It didn't matter; it felt like the same branch. But instead of feeling like the loss of something important to her, the open wound felt like a beautiful sign of the inevitability of change. The loss of one beautiful thing, she thought, is no tragedy because another will always spring from the ashes.
She had her arms placed against a head-height branch and her face resting on her arms. It pulled her sweatshirt up so her midriff was bare and it was cold, but she felt too solemnly tranquil to move.
Suddenly it occurred to her that he was a liar. She had known it from the start. He had told her he lied well, but she never believed he would lie to her.
Without examining the urge she moved to the area they used to go to be alone - a small gap in the bushes no one would even know existed if they weren't searching for a secluded spot to do something illicit. When she arrived she was confused - there was no trek through thick foliage, there was no sense of intimate secrecy, there was only a view straight through to the Christian elementary school. The bushes had been trimmed. Sparse new plants of indeterminate species were growing where the dense dark bushes should be, their new bright green made even brighter and greener by their background of red and copper pine needles. Yes, she thought, change is not bad. The new will replace the old. The world will go on, continually refreshing itself. She did not miss they way things used to be.
She hesitated, then obeyed her compulsion to go home. She remembered distinctly, her phone was left on the side table. Maybe he had texted her by now.