After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, prompting women across America to question their bodily autonomy, I saw a young girl swinging and simply enjoying her physical strength and power. I wrote a poem to mirror the swing’s motion and invite the reader to discover multiple meanings embedded in different readings of the text.

Laurel Anderson is a plant ecologist and poet. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ecotone, Terrain.org, Radar Poetry, Split Rock Review, The Fourth River, and elsewhere. Laurel teaches science at Ohio Wesleyan University and lives with her family in central Ohio, USA.

X: @LaurelSciPoet
W: laurelandersonpoetry.com/