{"id":106896,"date":"2022-06-25T09:41:58","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T13:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/?p=106896"},"modified":"2022-07-09T18:26:38","modified_gmt":"2022-07-09T22:26:38","slug":"hour-one-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/hour-one-27\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Float, Hour One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Learning to Float<\/p>\n<p>I was six when Jaws the movie was released.<br \/>\nWe lived in Florida,<br \/>\na short bike ride to the beach,<br \/>\nand not too far to a favorite drive-in theater either.<\/p>\n<p>Tinny speakers hung from the windows<br \/>\nof our &#8217;76 full size van,<br \/>\nthe scent of popcorn wafted through<br \/>\npartial openings, and technicolor gore<br \/>\nsplashed across the enormous screen<br \/>\nin front of my terrified eyes,<br \/>\nmy sun browned body hunched in the back<br \/>\nbetween two much larger brothers.<\/p>\n<p>Our next trip to the beach<br \/>\nno way on this planet would I go in the water.<br \/>\nMy frustrated father<br \/>\npeeled my iron rod body off his neck,<br \/>\nlaid me on the water&#8217;s surface,<br \/>\nand spoke gently to me.<\/p>\n<p>My rigid little body<br \/>\nslowly relaxed into the waves&#8217; rhythms,<br \/>\nlulled by the rocking motion,<br \/>\nthe flickering sun flirting<br \/>\nwith clouds beyond my closed lids,<br \/>\nouter sounds distilled<br \/>\nto just my heartbeat,<br \/>\nas I dreamed<br \/>\nand felt his hand<br \/>\nbeneath my back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learning to Float I was six when Jaws the movie was released. We lived in Florida, a short bike ride to the beach, and not too far to a favorite drive-in theater either. Tinny speakers hung from the windows of our &#8217;76 full size van,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106896"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124809,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106896\/revisions\/124809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}