So I’m tearing down the plastic slide,
unhooking the tire swing, scooping out the sandbox,
digging up the wood posts, and thinking
that if I could just dig deep enough,
then I could breadcrumb trace a way,
bread crumb by bread crumb
back to what makes sense.

I want to see what it was like before
the first tribal fire, the cave paintings,
the first bronze war. Before dwellings of limestone
slabs and mud mortar. Before places were named
Standing Cow Ruins, Canyon del Muerto, The Soho Grand.
Before Dutch trading ships sailed to the New World,
the metallic inventions of the telegraph,
the atom bomb and highway toll booths.

I start with blue-green sod, topsoil, even deeper
to the rust-red clay, working my way down
through shards and shale, and then to the finality
of wet, black bedrock.
It won’t budge, not even a little.

With nowhere else to go, I drape my body
over the grey, weathered shovel handle,
blue t-shirt drenched in a fine ancient silt.

It’s getting dark. Streetlights buzz to life.
Television illuminates the neighbor’s bedroom.

My child is gone.