For Your Discomfort

FOR YOUR DISCOMFORT / Julia Mishkin Here's a charm against waking when you don't want to—when the only squirrels singing are the ones amused by their own voices, and those voices are nothing to laugh about. Here's to the end of pacing. I don't mean the kind that scrubs the floorboards clean, but that trip you take, cruising the light of the mind. That light's too bright to let anyone sleep! And no shutters, no consommé warming on the back burner., .it's the body you fear, the one lying next to you with its groans and angles, the shoulderblades sharpening—for what? For the long haul back, the daily burdens carried in that knapsack, sleep, leaking through the seams. You hate secrets. That's why you're here, rubbing two thoughts together, hoping for fire...there's no fire, no kindling even, but these ankles restless and approximate, and something makes the heart box the way 22 ¦ The Missouri Review it does, not fear, but the one small leaf hanging on outside that hasn't turned red yet, the green spark that lights the inner dark... Julia Mishkin The Missouri Review ¦ 23 ...