Bless her heart<\/p>\n
I keep telling myself I can’t save everybody<\/p>\n
When I scolded her eight year old cousin for preparing to eat a pile of Oreo cookies without permission<\/p>\n
she cut her 17 year old eyes downward as if she wasn’t going to get involved<\/p>\n
When I returned a few minutes later, he had consumed them all<\/p>\n
I asked her why she hadn’t intervened<\/p>\n
Well, he told me you said it was ok earlier<\/em><\/p>\n I looked at her. Did it sound like I was ok with him eating the stack of cookies?<\/p>\n Well, I didn’t know who was telling the truth<\/em><\/p>\n I looked at her for a few minutes<\/p>\n Well, you can’t tell me adults don’t lie<\/em><\/p>\n Regardless of whether I was or was not lying, you knew my disapproval<\/p>\n What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to take care of him?<\/em><\/p>\n I know she was pushing me. I know she was jealous of her cousin getting to move in with me while she is homeless. I know she was playing manipulative games she learned from her mother many years ago before her mother was sent to prison. And yet, I know she secretly longs to find a home with me, too.<\/p>\n Bless her heart.<\/p>\n I keep telling myself I can’t save everybody<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bless her heart I keep telling myself I can’t save everybody When I scolded her eight year old cousin for preparing to eat a pile of Oreo cookies without permission she cut her 17 year old eyes downward as if she wasn’t going to get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[5765,6217,6218],"class_list":["post-138547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompts","tag-2023poetrymarathon","tag-2023hour15","tag-another-perspective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138547","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\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138691,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138547\/revisions\/138691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}