{"id":1051,"date":"2007-08-31T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-31T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2007-08-31T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-31T13:30:00","slug":"when-i-was-ten-by-juliet-humphreys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/when-i-was-ten-by-juliet-humphreys\/","title":{"rendered":"When I was ten by Juliet Humphreys"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was ten<\/span>

Mum fell in love with Uncle Phil.<\/span>
She always said to me it didn't mean<\/span>
she loved Dad less,<\/span>
only this time Dad found out<\/span>
and rammed Mum's pink plastic hairbrush<\/span>
down his best mate's throat.<\/span>

        ***<\/span>

The day they let Dad out of jail<\/span>
he ran down the street in his socks,<\/span>
shoes flung over some hedge;<\/span>
knowing of nowhere else to go<\/span>

he came home.<\/span>
He'd kept his key and used it now.<\/span>
It's as well we'd not moved<\/span>
or he'd have gone straight back.<\/span>

He boiled the kettle for coffee,<\/span>
used the loo and looked around<\/span>
at what was our life still.<\/span>
He told me later how he needed shoes<\/span>

but the only ones he could find to wear<\/span>
were mine and Mum's. She'd binned<\/span>
all his stuff \u2013 hoping, he supposed,<\/span>
he'd not come back to know.<\/span>

So there he was in pink stilettos,<\/span>
heels hanging off the back,<\/span>
walking like it was something new,<\/span>
holding onto furniture that used to be his.<\/span>

He gave up on the shoes, left our house<\/span>
in his socks, picking his way down the road<\/span>
avoiding stones<\/span>

Mum came home from work<\/span>
and without stopping to wonder why<\/span>
she scooped up her shoes,<\/span>
like stray children's toys.<\/span>

She saw the lid left off the coffee jar.<\/span>
Your dad's out then, was all she said.<\/span>
You'll have him back, I accused her,<\/span>
too old to believe in fairy tales.<\/span>

I'll not, she replied,<\/span>
eyes fixed on nothing,<\/span>
smiling in spite of herself,<\/span>
not if he doesn't ask.<\/span>


\u2022 Juliet Humphreys say “About me: I would like to be a poet who teaches but too often it is the other way around.”<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was tenMum fell in love with Uncle Phil.She always said to me it didn't meanshe loved Dad less,only this time Dad found outand rammed Mum's pink plastic hairbrushdown his best mate's throat.        ***The day they let Dad out of jailhe ran down the street in his socks,shoes flung over some hedge;knowing of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}