{"id":138711,"date":"2023-09-02T23:36:14","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T03:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=138711"},"modified":"2023-09-02T23:36:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T03:36:14","slug":"sister-hour-fifteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/sister-hour-fifteen\/","title":{"rendered":"Sister, Hour Fifteen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>*Sister<\/p>\n<p>We floated in warmth and quiet together,<br \/>\nmy sister and I,<br \/>\noutside sounds muffled but for the beat<br \/>\nof our mother&#8217;s heart,<br \/>\nher singing voice lulling us to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>She grew larger than me over time,<br \/>\nher flailing limbs weaker and slower,<br \/>\nwhile I, though smaller,<br \/>\nand pinned to mother&#8217;s side,<br \/>\nwas stronger, more sure in my movements.<\/p>\n<p>We grew, we two, and dreamed infant dreams,<br \/>\nof the lives we would one day live,<br \/>\nbut those dreams would fail,<br \/>\na nightmare begun,<br \/>\nthe day my sister died.<\/p>\n<p>We remained together, still connected<br \/>\nby blood vessels large and small.<br \/>\nHer heart had stopped<br \/>\nits rhythm with mine,<br \/>\nmy heart beat on alone.<\/p>\n<p>*Side note to this story: my twin girls developed twin to twin transfusion syndrome, a condition affecting the blood vessels of identical twins, while in utero. My daughter, Martha, died of heart failure ten weeks prior to their birth, and I carried both her and her living sister, my daughter Sara, within me together to thirty-five weeks. My daughter, Sara (Anderson) is writing in the marathon with me now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>*Sister We floated in warmth and quiet together, my sister and I, outside sounds muffled but for the beat of our mother&#8217;s heart, her singing voice lulling us to sleep. She grew larger than me over time, her flailing limbs weaker and slower, while I,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138711","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=138711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138814,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138711\/revisions\/138814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}