I was 10 years old and my grandparents had this amazing swing slide
combo set, you know, the all wooden elephant we would turn our
bodies into such magnificent creatures for until our lungs became a
crackling sound barrier, my favorite thing was the swing, the breath
Tarzaning it’s way in cool autumn air, and I’m not sure how it
actually happened, the falling, the shattering of the silent boy, I must
have been thinking about math or karate or how much I didn’t like
gym class but loved the parachute day, who didn’t love the parachute
day, the only day you would get to be engulfed by so many beautiful
colors and no one had a label for it, so it felt safe, I
guess maybe that’s what I was thinking about when it happened, me
gliding through the dirt palms forward, the splitting hair of bone in
the arm and can you blame the boy for weaving such soft wrists; I
remember my grip on the chain-linked swing, the continual hard
click of metal rings suspending me in midair before snatching,
gripping the back of my collar like my mother in a grocery store
parking lot when I’d wandered too far from her side, how every time
I jumped from that swing, I didn’t fear wind’s gentle scooping hands
playing catcher’s mitt to my bones, I knew I could land anything, my
ass horizontal to the top support beam, the thumping post rhythm
of my accelerated heartbeat and maybe I was thinking about the time
me and the kid from 4 houses down hid under the tongue of the
slide, how he unbuckled the small knot of his pants, and curious, I
followed like a lost stray, how the pulling of my skin had the same
howl as the swing’s mighty bellow, I must have been thinking
about the touching and how it felt so safe,
him in my hands, how I find myself still grasping for something to
catch me when I’m falling and it’s funny, I’m sure I wasn’t thinking
about any of that, just how I could stick this landing like a used piece
of gum hugging the bottom of my shoe and surely I thought, I’ve
done this before, so it must be safe. But
there was no boy there to fall into.

I am terrified of the backroads hanging off Pennsylvania.
A boy asks me to meet him in the dark alley of a country woods.

The boy asks me to ravage him on the creaking off-trail road,
carve my name in him and with that I'd stay forever.

Carve my skin with his and become a glass jar for now.
I share my location with my best friend of where to find me.

I share my body with a boy and only my best friend knows
where I hide when my skin is unlatching at the armpits and ankles.

Where I hide all bodies blooming in the swirl of my gut.
But his palms requested me, the small bleeding prize he can hold

in his hands. A trophy bleeding out always at his request.
And sure, I am afraid this man in my cell is a murderer

or that this white man might be racist and I am unknowing.
I am terrified of being found hanging off the Pennsylvania backroads.