An empty playground with fog all around. Without the help of electric lighting she would not be visible either. As no one is seen, as nothing is heard. Not even a motorized one, strange! Just some drops falling from the autumn leaves, a remnant of the rain. They fall and land again on logs, perhaps a little more yellow than before.
But where did everyone go, are they sleeping? Where are the children who were playing until a few days ago in this park? And what looks like fog is definitely fog; It could be smoke from the fireplaces since we already know it's autumn or smoke from the burning branches from this year's olive harvest. What is it that will define when the homework is done and when the children will close the door of the house behind them, leaving the school obligations to go outside? But of course the time. So what time is it?
The human species is active during hours that contain sunlight, for the most part. If it is past time you will definitely not see children playing. And okay guys, not a single couple sitting in each other's arms? Not even a couple who got together a few days ago and are still living in the days of passion? Not even a couple, on one of the many benches, to say their last goodbye, and then continue as a unit on their way with one more or less hurt than the other? None of these. Not even the municipal employees, who work on the late-night garbage collection, have appeared with the bulky and at the same time noisy vehicle. Not even that can be heard even from the most distant building blocks approaching.
But if the time is not passed?
This question brought me to these thoughts. Why so much abandonment? Even the hunched basketballs look haunted, what happened and the city was abandoned, if indeed it was abandoned so suddenly? My thoughts raced to areas of the earth where war is raging, the closest to us being in Ukraine. From the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon and the Islamist insurgency in Mozambique to the Syrian civil war and the war in Libya. All have the common denominator of fear, confinement and abandonment.
Do you feel lucky that you weren't born in the wrong place, at the wrong time...at the wrong time?
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