Lindsay Russell

The Poet

The first. The busiest and most painful day of the month in my line of work. Last Christmas I’d gotten into the arrangement of paying part of my rent after the 20th and never managed to catch up. Many of my tenants did the same, and I never held it against them. In this economy, the struggle to make ends meet is real. To make matters worse, I misplaced my notebook over the weekend. I ended up typing some of my poems and even writing a short story for a contest I heard about, just to get the thoughts out of my head. It’s like I can’t turn my mind off sometimes, even if I want to. I try to live a super clean lifestyle, for the baby. So this was like therapy for us.