After raspberry pancakes
Mom declared
in our olive-green kitchen:
today, I’ll teach you to swing.
She hoisted her own
thick hips
into the black smile
next to me
pumped sky
in her stone washed jeans.
Just gotta lean
into it.
Then below that bar of rust,
her seat suddenly
snapped.
She gripped the old chains—stuck the landing.
Remember our laugh?
Lung-crush of hilarity
while everyone else
held their
breath.
—Bethany Rohde, from Casual: A Little Book of Jeans Poems & Photos, T. S. Poetry Press