As a parent, I get your concern. Something about a disgruntled-looking older gentleman photographing an elementary school playground looks out of place.  At the same time, it’s my lunch break, and I’m not going to let you or your PTA cronies keep me from my sweetheart. Listen, I would never harm a child. I’m just in love with this playground.

Do you see that ladder, the red one with the chipping paint, kind of obscured by a tree? Judging by the leaves, an American hornbeam.  Yeah, that one. A ritual murder happened there a few years back and The Gazette published a surprisingly graphic photo of the crime scene. But when I saw it, it wasn’t the mayor’s entrails that caught my eye. It was the ladder.  Those exposed pockets of rust. The way the middle sags like a bench in an overcapacity little league dugout. Its ADA noncompliance. Before I knew it, I was tangled in its rungs.  I needed more.

Wait, sorry.  If you could tell your daughter to stop being so rough on Helena’s mini arch bridge, I’d appreciate it.  Helena’s what I call the playground.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton Memorial Elementary School Playground just never did it for me.

I’ll never forget maneuvering Helena’s multicolor plastic-roofed elevated platform for the first time. I had to lube up my 240-pound globular frame with two full bottles of Pam just to fit through the child-sized opening, but it was worth it. And not just because the Pam has tremendous exfoliating properties.  Shimmying through her tunnels was like consummating with a seraph.  Also, when I say “child-sized opening,” I mean an opening fit for children, not an opening in a child.  I want nothing to do with openings of children. Do children even have openings? I don’t know because I don’t think about them.  Please let me stay on this bench.

My favorite thing about Helena is that she’s so real. She’s got redwood mulch, even brand name Safe-Play tiling. Her tunnel is made of world-renowned Guangdong Province fiberglass, unlike that fraudulent stuff they try to pass off as real Guang at Kirkmine-Poverty Elementary.   Some say her steel is from the Twin Towers. I say all of her is from Heaven.

Seriously, your daughter is fucking up the mini arch bridge’s varnish with her Reeboks.  The school board isn’t going to pay for those scuffs.  Please. Control your child.

I wrote to Helena’s manufacturer last year asking for her proverbial hand in marriage.  When PlayKing International didn’t bother to respond, I took things into my literal hands.  See those angry boys spinning that bawling girl on the tire swing? They’re playing with my engagement ring.  I bought that at Lowe’s. The spinners: transient groomsmen.  The spinee: my lover’s ring finger.  Our union is complete.

Sorry, what a lame, misleading attempt at poetry. Children are not actually Helena’s fingers. I would never marry a child, nor would a child be all or even part of any lover that I may have. That’s not what I’m about! Put your phone down!

I am a man, she is a playground, and we are deeply, deeply in love.  At least we try to be, but it can be hard with people like you, police officers, school officials and priests always questioning my motives. I am a man of pure heart, pure soul, pure intentions. I’ve always been faithful to my Helena, barring a brief tryst with another playground’s incline vine climber that I have admitted and regret. I’ll never cast an amorous eye on another structure as long as I live, especially if that structure is an elementary school student.

Great, now my lunch break is over and I spent it justifying my feelings again. Took these photos for nothing. Not enough time to masturbate in the empty lot behind CVS before heading back to work.  I promised Helena a poem today and now I don’t have time to read it, could you do it for me? Over there by that tree, that’s my reciting place. Judging by the girth of the trunk, a quaking aspen. Yeah, that one. Just go over and read this, she’ll know it’s from me. It’s a love sonnet. Wrote it in iambic pentameter. Helena’s going to love it.