Playground Love by Mileva Anastasiadou

               M Reza Faisal CC



Playground Love

This place is my escape plan. Every single day, upon waking up, I am free to choose whether I want one more cup of coffee or not. I spend some time here, pondering, talking with you, my long gone soul-mate. We talk like we used to talk, sharing our memories, our plans, as if you’re not gone, as if you’re still here beside me. Every single day, I choose to go back home.

This place is my revolt. Every single day, I revolt against this unfortunate fate. I then resign to it, for I don’t know how to handle revolt. That’s the issue with revolution, you say. So far, nobody has discovered the proper way to handle it. You wink at me, smiling. I guess so, I say, lowering my eyes. Then you stare at me, holding my hand and I know you’ll try to take the ticket you once gave me, but I turn away, keeping it tightly in my free hand. You’ll never take it back, I tell you, while you insist I have to move on. Then you blink once or twice and I know it’s time to go back. 

This place exists because I’ve created it. Our worlds are interwoven, you say, connected by memory. I keep it going, you keep me moving. You exist, as long as I remember. Here is heaven. Here is bliss. The other side of the circle, the place you call life, is where you live, yet we here know this is where true life is, you tell me. For true life life is where happiness is possible. Yet happiness cannot exist without its opposite. We cannot exist without you, you claim. Once forgotten, we vanish into thin air.

This place is blue. For places are colored. People are colored. They emit colors, like they emit odors. I’m blue when I’m here. I’m happy blue. I’m endless sea-like blue. I’m open-spaced sky-like blue. Only I’m gray, when I go back. I look weird, a gray person in summertime. I can’t blue myself enough to fit in. I suffer from a typical case of  seasonal impostor syndrome. Only this ticket allows me into a blue-happy world. 

This place is my playground. Every single day, upon waking up, I take the ticket from under my pillow and hold it tight in my hands. I never went to the concert to keep this ticket intact. It’s worn out by time, but it still has its color. It’s blue. This ticket is the last thing you gave me. It’s not a ticket to a concert anymore. It’s a ticket to your world. 

This place is my happy place. I want to miss home, to miss real life, only I don’t and I feel miserable. How pathetic am I to not miss life? Yet when I start missing it, I feel even sadder. For I’m in heaven and I can’t appreciate it enough to stay here forever. What’s wrong with me? I ask and you pat my back and urge me to go home. 

This place is where I come to feed. Every single day, I visit you. You feed me with hugs and kisses and tender words. You hang out with River Phoenix, you say. He was the first celebrity to die on me. You were my love who also died on me. He is sitting in the backseat and you ride through the vastness, like we did, searching our own private place of happiness. The place I’ve found here, where joy overwhelms me, as if I’ve already answered both basic questions of life: if life is worth living and how to make love stay. 

This is the place where I regain my youth. The older I get, the less the world revolves around me. This blue ticket brings me back to the center of the world. I’m the true phoenix, rising each day from my ashes, unlike both of you, who vanished. I’m that phoenix until I will no longer be. Michael Stipe wrote a song about a letter he never sent him and made it a song. It was his name, camouflaged in a song, that was playing that night he died. I can’t remember the song that played the night you left. Whatever it was, it didn’t involve my name. That’s because there was no music, you tell me. Perhaps there wasn’t, yet I still hear music every time I hold this ticket in my hands. Or it could be me, crooning “Playground Love”, before I leave you in heaven to face another cup of coffee, another day without you in the real world.

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Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist. Her work can be found in many journals, such as the Molotov Cocktail, Jellyfish Review, the Sunlight Press (Best Small Fictions 2019 nominee), Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, Ellipsis Zine, Queen Mob's Tea House, Bending Genres, Eastern Iowa Review (Best of Net 2019 nominee), Litro, Moon Park Review and others. @happymil_