After Setbacks, We Go Sideways

We dash through urban gullies, thistles swiping our legs. We’ve
lost the stone head. The old man on the three-wheeled bicycle
shouts that courage is a broken rake still gathering leaves. We
catch our breath and summit Everest in matching droopy hats.
No frostbite till we start the descent. We find healing goldfish
in the middle of obligation and the clock. At night, we nestle
in a drawer of odd socks, a ray of yes in a world of no. When we
hit a wall, we will make a door.









Tracy Mishkin is a call center veteran with a PhD and an MFA student in Creative Writing at Butler University.The author of two chapbooks, I Almost Didn’t Make It to McDonald’s (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and The Night I Quit Flossing (Five Oaks Press, 2016), she writes in Indiana. https://tracymishkin.wordpress.com