NOTHING SCARES ME MORE

My orange kitten climbs a tree.  Skinny
branches bend and sway.  She dangles
upside down, hangs by a needle-claw of paw.

My heart blocks my throat like it did
that childhood evening I saw Suzie Dell dangle
by her knees from our school’s jungle gym,
her blue skirt falling past a tanned neck while
bare legs climbed from pink panties above
a shadowy man reaching his arms toward her.
I reach out toward my kitten, lest it fall.

Nothing scares me more
than the thought of soft and dangling things
coming to harm on hard ground beneath skinny
branches or on twilight summer playworn grasses
beneath a long ago schoolyard’s jungle gym.