C-Novack

The Gift By Chrystyne Novack Autumn leaves free fall, weaving back and forth in tune with the motion of the woman seated on the swing. Hope pushes herself higher, to the blue horizon. She sighs with the swaying trees and notices a lone pine outside the playground. The trunk infested with rot and needles falling from its balding crown. Wind caresses Hope's bare head. She muses that the tree is akin to her own cancer-blighted body. A mother and child enter the park as a bird flies whitely overhead. Hope takes flight one last time, and then leaps to the ground. The woman's eyes meet that of the sickly girl swaddled in a w