Edges by Aislinn McDougall

Edges

At eight, I found a knife nestled in the grass

near the merry-go-round,

after school.

It must have winked at me, where I flew high on the swings.

Black and slick with dew, it had to be a murder weapon,

so fantasies of 20/20 ran through my head,

instructing me to throw it, with feeling,

deep into the trees that lined the park.

An older boy from school said it was his.

He came looking for it.

I’d casually tell my parents over supper,

only to have them distraught, get up

half-fed, shrugging coats on at dusk to retrieve it.

I’d thought I’d done the right thing,

but admonished by their panic

and gingerly digging through rotting leaves in the trees as the ground got colder,

I realized I was only a child.

We never found the knife.

It likely sank into the marshy bed of the ditch

that rooted the trees between the seesaws and Aspen Bay.

It’s probably still there, across from the mayor’s house.

It’s probably red with rust now.

It’s probably feet underground by now.

We probably spent years, soaring past it

as we maxed out our bikes down the crest of Broad Street.

Six years later, on a hot October day, that boy from school would die instantly

in the most disturbing way, on the street where the town gossip lived.

I still imagine her, eyes bulging and hungry,

peeping through a slit she fingered into her own blinds,

waiting for a tragedy to talk about at the hockey rink.

Nothing would ever be the same after that.