don’t use taciturn strategy or calculated empathy

don’t stretch before or make a plan of attack 

my words are not checkpoints along the way

my back is not your racetrack

my hair is not your starting flag 

my legs are not your goal posts 

I am not an opponent to defeat 

or a time to beat

being with me is not a race

and my mattress is not the finish line.

Nicoline Antonovitch

Nicoline Antonovitch studies Professional Writing at Algonquin College and has appeared in Blank Spaces and other small publications. She writes with the vulnerability of an exposed nerve and cries at the drop of a hat. Her stubbornness, bushy black eyebrows, and love of sour cream all stem from her Slavic-European background.