Remember when we would go to the nursing home<\/p>\n
and glue puzzles together and trade books worn out<\/p>\n
and weighed down with the annotations of<\/p>\n
literal generations – we painted sunflowers<\/p>\n
and\u00a0lilies for each room with a little old lady lacking<\/p>\n
family or support. We made such a routine out<\/p>\n
of being there to name the hummingbirds whenever<\/p>\n
we lost someone to the garden and chasing fireflies<\/p>\n
for the old men in walkers still in love with the<\/p>\n
dream versions of their wives and kids – already passed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I don’t know why the smell of pine sol and lemon<\/p>\n
are so distinct to me when the memories were<\/p>\n
actually so bright and the lessons that were<\/p>\n
inherited within those walls so valuable – I don’t know<\/p>\n
why I can write poems for Shirely’s mom<\/p>\n
but when i want to write for shirley herself or<\/p>\n
mourn Johnny (I’m late to that party too) the pen<\/p>\n
just dries up so completely it can’t be salvaged<\/p>\n
and the computer freezes and the internet dies<\/p>\n
and the storm drags all my ideas to a city that<\/p>\n
will never appreciate them the way I did.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Her birthday is coming up soon and she hasn’t<\/p>\n
returned my calls for the last two years, but<\/p>\n
I’ll go ahead and give her a ring anyway.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wouldn’t you?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
-M. Rene’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Remember when we would go to the nursing home and glue puzzles together and trade books worn out and weighed down with the annotations of literal generations – we painted sunflowers and\u00a0lilies for each room with a little old lady lacking family or support. We…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2114],"tags":[5818,2158,5916],"class_list":["post-139254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-official-marathon-announcement","tag-5818","tag-full-marathon","tag-full-marathon-2023-sincerelybluejay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139254","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\/4176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139283,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139254\/revisions\/139283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}