To be a human jungle gym

08.15.2024

"Stick your arm out!" 

Promptly I am converted into a thing to be climbed

            (the only acceptable sort of dehumanization)

then I succumb to a “hug attack” 

soon my forearms will make a little girl fly–

she is superwoman!

 

I am taken away to a secret hideout 

crawling under a fence a through a thicket of bushes,

entrusted with some great secret

 

I tower above these six-year-olds I just met 

but that is the beauty of friends who are family,

once, I clamored around as a small thing, 

climbing up the legs of others

and now it has become my turn to be a 

jungle gym for the next generation of young'uns.