Finding balance on my swing

that raises braided arms of polyester,

I point my feet downward to scold gravity

from the high throne of my plastic seat. 

I push with vengeance, 

my legs propellers, then hit an impossible height,

and go higher. 

I refuse to let the strings that

attach me to earth bind me again

to the heavy will of an invisible puppeteer.

Now, wind floods around me, and I, an air fish,

look up to pinpoint my destination.

Layers of sky with hazy yellows and sailor blues

Slip in and out of reach, like 

the taut rope clinging to the tree limb

mistook me as Icarus, failing to allow

a definite tragedy.

But the bird’s wings, high in that home sky,

do not burn and crash with him.

We must be the same, defiant to the heavens.

I can’t stop.

I have to meet the race with my feathered brother

And prove myself in that home sky.

So, I strengthen my brace to

force those rope wings to reach higher,

ignoring its exhausted sighs of fraying joints,

then aged cries, then sobbing screams.

But by then I was already soaring with 

the bullet bird who doesn’t wait for me.

I push to freedom with legs of silly string,

and become caught between two worlds,

realizing that I had crafted my wings,

not grown them.

And I crash onto the grass.