{"id":69473,"date":"2020-06-27T18:16:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T22:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=69473"},"modified":"2020-06-27T20:26:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-28T00:26:24","slug":"10-just-about-a-response-to-moonshadow-by-cat-stevens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/10-just-about-a-response-to-moonshadow-by-cat-stevens\/","title":{"rendered":"#10 Just About&#8211;A Response to &#8220;Moonshadow,&#8221; by Cat Stevens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I said to him, we can\u2019t possibly understand<br \/>\nwhat drives someone to contemplate<br \/>\nsuicide. It\u2019s true, he said.<br \/>\nAnd it was as if we\u2019d connected<br \/>\nin that moment,<br \/>\nin our shared inability to empathize<br \/>\nwith lost souls.<br \/>\nBut I had lied. <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve sometimes thought<br \/>\nabout how easy it would be<br \/>\nto die. All of me would fall away,<br \/>\nleaving no aches in my legs,<br \/>\nno catch in my back,<br \/>\nno kink in neck,<br \/>\nno pounding fist in my skull.<\/p>\n<p>And my eyes would close to humanity\u2019s<br \/>\nterrors. My mouth would seal<br \/>\nitself, become ash, and my heart would shrivel<br \/>\nand forego that drowning feeling<br \/>\nthat tightens my chest every time<br \/>\ncruelty rears its head in this world.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I think about how I fear<br \/>\ndeath. But I don\u2019t really\u2014fear it.<br \/>\nI don\u2019t welcome it<br \/>\nyet, either. But I understand,<br \/>\nand when waking is difficult<br \/>\nand strange,<br \/>\nI think it would be so easy<br \/>\nto fall away with all my parts<br \/>\nfrom the world and become nothing<br \/>\nlike I was before conception.<br \/>\nTo be undone<br \/>\nmeans no work,<br \/>\nno sorrow, no voice,<br \/>\nno tomorrow. And sometimes,<br \/>\nthat sounds just about right. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I said to him, we can\u2019t possibly understand what drives someone to contemplate suicide. It\u2019s true, he said. And it was as if we\u2019d connected in that moment, in our shared inability to empathize with lost souls. But I had lied. I\u2019ve sometimes thought about&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1489,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69473","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\/1489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69505,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69473\/revisions\/69505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}