We are four out of twenty-three million*, called down to the sports oval by a dancing wind, the open sky and a slow-baked April sun. Degrees are just numbers though, as are population statistics, I thought, as we tossed the basketball to each other. Playing schoolyard games, diving for a catch – this is how easy life can be (for an hour). Then the skin starts to prickle from exposure and blood sugars start to dip and the relay lanes stamped into the ground are now less guides than lassos to confine the grass, keep things ordered; a reminder of the regulations of play. Then it was time to go home, surely to fight and love, and fight again. But, for this brief period, there was peace to be found in the arc of a throw before watching it land safely in safe hands.
*Australia’s population ticked past twenty-three million this week.
