When I was five and our parents divorced I never cared to know why and<\/p>\n
You might think that was really bad<\/p>\n
When I was six and our mother left us at our father\u2019s door in his rooming house because we were cramping her style<\/p>\n
You might think that was really bad<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But none of that felt really bad \u2013 then<\/p>\n
And now<\/p>\n
All of it was<\/p>\n
Really really good<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Because my mother hated school<\/p>\n
And never cared if we went<\/p>\n
Because my mother wanted to buy and buy and accumulate cheap trashy expensive things<\/p>\n
And I wanted to learn and learn and clutter my space with books and art<\/p>\n
Because my mother loved to party and didn\u2019t — or couldn’t? — read<\/p>\n
And I loved to read and didn\u2019t party<\/p>\n
Because my father and I read the news every day<\/p>\n
and talked politics together at the breakfast table<\/p>\n
And my grandmother collected books and smiled as we read them and bought more<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I wish I could write my mother’s true story for her<\/p>\n
but all she left me is regret and imagination<\/p>\n
and one sure truth:<\/p>\n
If we had not cramped our mother\u2019s style<\/p>\n
I would not be telling this story<\/p>\n
I would not be writing this poem<\/p>\n
I would not be me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was five and our parents divorced I never cared to know why and You might think that was really bad When I was six and our mother left us at our father\u2019s door in his rooming house because we were cramping her style…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4923],"class_list":["post-117426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-2022marathon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117426","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\/853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117426"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124730,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117426\/revisions\/124730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}