small.world

They were running, trying to ward off the remaining coolness of that spring evening, hiding behind slides and ricocheting off swing sets, trying not to get caught. Being "it" was the my guiltiest pleasure as a child. It gave me a sense of power, having my classmates flee before me...
It was different for them, though. They had long passed the age at which it was possible for such a game to invoke such a mad rush of accomplishment. Her palm brushed the aged leather of his jacket just as he turned around and caught a few loose strands of her hair between his fingertips, and lifted them off into the air again, careful not to hurt his companion. She darted in between the swings, giggled madly as the chipper wind skidded across her rosy cheeks. This girl, this wide-eyed brown-haired girl, she loved this man-child. She always thought his eyes were twins with hers. Together, she knew they could be four beautiful eyes, two fragile skulls, and twenty intertwining fingers.
They lay in the grass and created personalities for the passing clouds and the strolling leaves leftover from the previous autumn, breezing jealously past their taller, more verdant counterparts.
He picked up a leaf and cupped it in his hands, delicately, so as not to crumble the poor thing and held it out to the April breeze. It was swiftly lifted up into the firmament and disappeared from their view.
"You know", he said, "We just altered the course of that leaf's existence. Wherever it will end up now, it will be because of us".
The girl thought for a minute and asked, "Well, does it really matter? The leaf died last autumn when it fell off the tree." The boy sat up and cupped the girl's cold face in his hands.
"One day, we are all going to die, but it doesn't mean we are all going to cease to matter. That leaf is dead, but it changed us in a way... we are sitting here now... underneath the sky, with remnants of what was one a life in our hands" He lay back down and stared at the sky. The girl felt really really small.
"Hold my hand", she begged.
The boy slipped his hand through hers and she felt the callouses grazing his thin fingers while they watched the sun go down.
They stayed like that forever.