a pre-teen enters

 

first, a hesitant step,

then an almost-step

then a side step,

a trip,

a heel skid

a half-stumble

a wide flailing grab for the door

a just-in-the-nick-of-time-recovery

to bounce off the door jamb

then the other one

and he’s in, finally ̶ grinning.

 

Richard Toth lives in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. He has won prizes from The Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick and The Ontario Poetry Society. His work has appeared in a number of print literary journals and is online at The Feathertale Review, blue skies poetry, The Oral Tradition, Stanley The Whale, The Red River Review, Anthropomorphic Dreams, and is upcoming at Maybe 40 Below. “A Kind of Love Story, With Incursions by the Writer,” a novel, was published by wolfonwater in 2012.