The Swing
With no one around to push you,
you started slowly pumping your legs,
pulling hard against the chains
on the backswing to fling yourself forward,
staring up the links to the bar
it was rumored you could swing over
if you got going high enough, though
no one told you what happened then.
That feeling in your belly,
you'd felt it once before,
the time you caught Tina Nguyen
showing Shawn Bradbury, who got
shot dead in a bar last year, the hot pink
shoulder strap of her undershirt.
You were seeing the same thing
he was seeing, the difference being
he was being shown it.
When you felt that feeling
you knew it was time to jump off,
falling to your hands and knees
in the grass, the chains twisting
and untwisting, twisting
and untwisting,
twisting and untwisting.