She came in<\/p>\n
All eyes on her<\/p>\n
I cringed<\/p>\n
The conversation stopped<\/p>\n
She had to be center<\/p>\n
Every Christmas<\/p>\n
Every Thanksgiving<\/p>\n
It was always the same<\/p>\n
I watched them<\/p>\n
They all laughed at her jokes<\/p>\n
Someone took her coat<\/p>\n
They loved her laugh<\/p>\n
I hated it<\/p>\n
Too loud, too fake<\/p>\n
She was the fun one<\/p>\n
I was the serious one<\/p>\n
I could not get a word in edgewise,<\/p>\n
sideways or upside down.<\/p>\n
Her stories had all been told before<\/p>\n
Spoken with a loud laugh<\/p>\n
Embellished way past the actual facts.<\/p>\n
She didn’t tell lies exactly<\/p>\n
The truth just evaded her<\/p>\n
Like I did.<\/p>\n
Her children cringed too<\/p>\n
Her oldest disappeared<\/p>\n
Her youngest tried to be like her<\/p>\n
I went outside where it was quiet<\/p>\n
I watched the smaller kids dodge and duck<\/p>\n
Here was real laughter<\/p>\n
I took some pictures<\/p>\n
I zoomed in on faces<\/p>\n
I wasn’t the only one<\/p>\n
Lost in a crowd<\/p>\n
Overshadowed by shadows.<\/p>\n
She was always the sunshine<\/p>\n
I was always the shadow<\/p>\n
Later she left<\/p>\n
The room sighed in relief<\/p>\n
The conversations resumed<\/p>\n
The room more quiet<\/p>\n
More subdued<\/p>\n
More relaxed<\/p>\n
She was hard to keep up with<\/p>\n
I never understood why they tried<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She came in All eyes on her I cringed The conversation stopped She had to be center Every Christmas Every Thanksgiving It was always the same I watched them They all laughed at her jokes Someone took her coat They loved her laugh I hated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73763","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\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73908,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73763\/revisions\/73908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}