If This was a Movie

Jack was asleep in the backseat, so I parked the car and ate my lunch. The playground was vacant but the lot was full of cars—full of cars full of people making out, eating lunch, or getting high but behind the wheel of a small import was a man crying into his fist. His wife has left him, I thought, left him for another man.

After he woke up, Jack and I went exploring—we found a golf-ball, a snapping turtle, a mama duck and her ducklings, and a couple of Goths filming an amateur porno underneath a graffiti-plastered railroad bridge. If this was a movie, I thought, her husband would be the sad sap crying in his car.

Josh Olsen teaches writing at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. He welcomes questions, comments, and conversation at jolsen79@gmail.com.