Surge

Ronelle Hart

 

Solitary and slightly apart from my twin sister and brothers and three cousins, I would slip away to the single backyard swing attached to high poles cemented into the earth in my aunt’s back yard. At first I just sat there and swayed, with feet just off the ground, but soon I tipped back to hang on my arms, holding tight onto the chains attached to the seat of the swing with sturdy bolts. From that up-tipped position, I could see the slow spidery trail made by the tips of my hair in soil scuffed to powdery dust by previous feet, the hot sun on my tender throat, in a trance until the heat and hanging upside down made me too dizzy. I would sit back up slowly, to fully feel it: the surge, a streaming sweetness in my stomach. And then I would push up, and up, and up again, my feet hard against the earth and then not, finding the exact rhythm with arms and legs and torso, swinging higher and higher. With each downward swoop, sometimes I’d sing, in my soft schoolgirl voice: “SOME-how, SOME-day, SOME-where..”, my hair, unloosed from its tight plait, a dark warm animal rushing past my face on the high backward push, and dusty from where I let it drag again as I gave my body over to the sway of slowing down.

For a while after, my sweaty palms carried the imprint of chain links and smelled of bitter iron.

Vintage image from Wikimedia Commons.