The free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wings

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

There was a little boy sitting on a swing, his hair matted with sweat and grime, his bare feet curled under the murky yellow of the plastic seat, tiny fingers wound around the rusting chains. His small placid eyes blinked down at the grains of sand kissing his feet in light touches.

He was a child.

There was a young woman standing beside the playground, hands in her pockets and head tipped down in a placid consideration of the unlocked fence. The last heat of the summer hung like honey and the orange of the sky was fading into darkness. There was an absent smile on her face.

She was no longer a child.

When the woman walked over to the swing, the child did not look up. Deep in his own thoughts it seemed. Her steps faltered as a sudden wave of nostalgia came over her. How beautiful it was to be a child. Sitting down on the water clogged swing, she tried to smile.

“My swing is wet,” said the woman quietly.

The boy froze on his own swing and did not look up. He said nothing.

They said nothing for a long time. And then, slowly, the boy looked up and said a-matter-of-factly, “You should’ve tipped the water out then.”

This time, the woman froze when she saw his face. There was a dark purplish bruise around his left eye and blood stains crusted down the side of his head. Registering what the woman was staring at, the boy quickly looked away.

He got up from his swing.

“Wait,” said the woman. When the she touched his hand, he flinched away. “Do you want to play on the swing? I’ll give you a push.”

“Okay,” answered the boy.

A bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The light of the sky had almost gone away, leaving the young woman and the little boy in the shadows of the blossom tree by the water clogged slide, dark red and blotchy like the stain on the boy’s head.

“You know what is the best thing that happened to me today?” asked the woman.

“What is it?” asked the boy, sitting pliantly at the top of the slide, gearing himself up for the free fall.

“Meeting my mother again.”

The boy stopped. His face fell into a gloom.

The woman wetted her lips, knowing she’d just hit the nail right on the head. “I used to hate her.”

The boy’s head snapped up then, his dark eyes wide in respectful astonishment.

“Isn’t—isn’t that…bad?” asked the boy shakily. He looked away. “My mamma says people who aren’t obedient to their parents will go to Hell.”

“That’s not true,” said the woman.

“Isn’t it?”

“If there is a Hell, the people who end up there are the ones who hurt others,” said the woman.

“There is a Hell,” said the boy fervently now. “Mamma says that’s where I’m going if I’m not a good boy. Mamma says I need to grow up or she won’t love me any more.”

The woman tried to smile but the smile wouldn’t come. “You know what I think? I think that if there is a Hell, we are already living in it.” She paused. “If you look up right now, what do you see?”

The boy looked up. There was nothing but the sky, purple and black and blue, like the discolouration on the little boy’s face, a haphazard map to madness.

“It’s just the sky,” said the boy.

“It’s a cage,” whispered the woman. “When I was little, I ran away from home. From my mum. From everyone I loved. Because I realised that the people and the community I grew up in was holding me back from living. I realised that I was never going to be happy if I stayed. So I ran away.”

“Where did you go?” asked the boy.

“It didn’t really matter where I went. Anywhere is better than where I was,” said the woman, putting her hand on the side of the slide, feeling the smooth texture of plastic under her touch. “I was happy for a while. I was happy because I was free. Free to do whatever I wanted. Free to be whoever I want to be. But as time goes by, my happiness faded away. I stopped being happy.”

“Why? You were free, weren’t you?” The boy frowned. “You ran away and you didn’t have to deal with your mamma any more.”

The woman smiled sadly. “That’s exactly it. I ran away from everything that held me back. But no matter where I go, the one thing I can never hide from is myself.” She paused. “Once I was rid of the people who were holding me back, I realised the one who really was holding me back was me. I couldn’t be happy where I grew up because I believed differently from other people. Because my thoughts just weren’t quite right. Not the way other people’s thoughts were.

“I used to have these dreams… strange empty dreams of another world. Another life where I didn’t have to deal with silly problems like family and friends and…and people who tried to hurt me. There was nothing here for me but sadness, I thought. I kept looking for that strange place in my dreams, because I believed it would solve my all my problems.

“I never realised I was also the problem. I couldn’t let go of my past, you see. I still loved too deeply and cared too much. About the people I left behind. About everything. And when your heart is weighed down by the past like that, no matter where you go, you’ll always end up coming back.”

The boy’s frown deepened, his fingers clamped tight on his shorts. “So there’s no escaping? I… I can’t escape.”

“Oh, there is a way. But it’ll be hard and dangerous,” said the woman softly. “The only way is straight through. The only way is to fight. No, not with fists or brawn. With your heart. Strong people don’t use fists. Punches and kicks are for weak people. The really strong ones don’t hurt others.”

The boy lifted his hands to his face, staring down at his knees.

“Mamma is…weak?”

The caged bird sings

with fearful trill

of the things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom

The boy slid down the slide, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. When he stood up and stumbled, the woman caught him.

“You know what’s the best thing that happened to me today?” asked the woman.

“Meeting your mamma again?”

“No. Making you smile,” said the woman.

The boy giggled. “I want to grow up quickly and be like you, noona.”

“Like me?” asked the woman. “Who says I’m grown up?”

“Because you’re tall and old!”

“I’m old?” asked the woman with a small laugh.

“Not that old,” said the boy compliantly.

“You know. I think grown-ups are just children pretending to be smart and strong,” said the woman. “They pretend they know better because they actually don’t know anything at all.”

The boy laughed. “Am I really strong, noona?”

“I think you are the strongest boy I ever met,” said the woman.

“But everybody calls me a wimp and a crybaby, and I’m always struggling at school!” whined the boy. He sat back on the swing and the woman pushed it for him.

She smiled. “The strongest people are the ones who struggle the most.”

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing

“Noona, what’s your name?” shouted the boy from the swing.

“My name is Junhee. What’s your name?”

The boy looked over his shoulder, his grimy tangled hair dancing to the wind as his swing moved through the air. He grinned, bright and beautiful.

“My name is Youngjae!” he laughed.

Junhee blinked.

The swing was still swinging, but there was no one on it.

The playground was empty.

Junhee ran.

She ran around the playground, looked under the slide, around the blossom tree and the hedges by the fence and found no one. She sprinted out of the playground, screaming the name that was already fading from her memories, she could feel it washing away with each wave of time. There had been somebody named Youngjae, wasn’t there? Someone she knew, someone very close to her and the people she loved.

She collided into something and fell over.

A familiar voice cursed. She looked up.

“Junhong!”

“Junhee, what the hell?” snapped Junhong, pushing himself from the ground. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you for hours!”

“What?”

Dabin popped out from behind Junhong, when he reached out to help Junhee from the ground, Junhong slapped his wrist and pulled her up himself.

“Don’t just leave like that! Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were going? You were gone and I thought —” Junhong stopped, anger and concern swirling in the dark pools of his eyes.

“Thought what?” said Junhee, confused.

“I thought you… I thought you left me again.”

Junhee opened and closed it.

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn right you should be!” he spat, before his expression slowly morphed into despair. He pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly. “You can’t leave me again.”

Junhee swallowed back a lump in .

“I won’t,” she said.

“Promise?” asked Junhong.

“Promise,” said Junhee, then, “But you also have to promise me something.”

“Anything,” he said.

Please log in to read the full chapter