heart attack, the words
\nwhispered from ear to ear
\nsounded horrible, cruel
\ncondescending
\nall i wanted was to rush
\ninto the room
\nwhere my father
\nlay hooked up
\nand hold him
\nclose, tell him
\nhe was safe
\nthey were allowing
\nno one in
\nnot even ma
\nwhy? did they know
\nabout the fight
\nabout the cruel words
\ndid they know that
\nchildren’s hearts
\nflutter in fear
\nat such times
\nmy heart is fluttering now
\nam I getting attacked too
\nby my own heart
\nI stand to call ma
\nbut words don’t
\nleave my throat
\nI drop to the floor
\nmany hands help me
\nmoments later
\nor have hours
\ngone by
\nmy eyes blink open
\nto see
\nboth my parents
\nhover over me
\nwhat? i gasp
\ndada, how did you
\nwhat happened to me?
\ndid i have a heart attack too? <\/p>\n
dada smiles at me
\nma does the same
\ntheir expression is
\nof genuine care
\nmy surprise must have registered
\nit’s alright, dada says
\nwe’re good, i’m good
\nyou’re good
\ni didn’t have a heart attack
\nit was stress
\nand you didn’t have one either
\nyou’d gone hungry too long
\ni sat up smelling something good
\na tray with delicious soup
\nlay nearby
\ndada signaled to the nurse
\nand soon i was tucking in
\nrelief trickles down my back
\nin gentle waves
\nall’s well that ends well <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
heart attack, the words whispered from ear to ear sounded horrible, cruel condescending all i wanted was to rush into the room where my father lay hooked up and hold him close, tell him he was safe they were allowing no one in not even…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1136,441,5],"tags":[4375,2506,5705,5133],"class_list":["post-116630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-official-marathon-prompts","category-poetry-prompt-responses","category-poetry-prompts","tag-ermelindamakkimane","tag-hour12","tag-hour12poeteymarathon2022","tag-thepoetrymarathon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116630","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\/3670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116630"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124219,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116630\/revisions\/124219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}