The Swing

by Amanda Lattin

She hadn’t swung on a swing since she was nine with scabby knees under the pine tree back home – no, wait, there was that one deliriously naked night on a trapeze at a club in Nashville; she decides that doesn’t count because if it’s not outside, it’s just not the same. Now, she pumps her flexed pointed legs into the blue sky and sees only her pink toenails outlined by the evergreens and indigo; gravity pulls on the chains, and a rush of long silken hair floods her vision and the rush of wind in her ears sends her back in time. She is once again a little girl pumping her way into an imaginative trance outside of poverty. The swing is now almost vertical, and her stomach drops a little as she hangs her head back and watches her shadow glide across the ground – a perfect ballerina’s silhouette – caressed by light and the kisses her hair continues to give the moving air. She notices her girlish behavior and not so girlish breasts have created a spectacle for the three gentlemen eating lunch in the otherwise deserted park; then, the voice of her three year old son stops the momentum: "Momma, can I have another push? You go too high, you fall and hurt your head?"

6S

Amanda Lattin is originally from, yes, the "Redneck Riviera" of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. She is a high school chemistry teacher and is currently working on dual masters in aromatherapy and herbal medicine.