{"id":13710,"date":"2017-06-23T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=13710"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:27:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:27:12","slug":"sharon-phillips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/sharon-phillips\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharon Phillips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Counting<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Imagine that you\u2019re sitting<br \/>\non the edge of your bed.<br \/>\nPerhaps you\u2019re shaving your legs.<br \/>\nAnd you see that the floor<br \/>\nis covered with dust.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Wherever you look there\u2019s dust<br \/>\nand the longer you look<br \/>\nthe more dust there is<br \/>\nbut you do not fetch<br \/>\nthe hoover or dustpan<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>because your father has just died<br \/>\nso you sit on the edge of your bed<br \/>\nlook at the floor and think<br \/>\nthat you might stay there<br \/>\ncounting the motes of dust.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Imagine that you\u2019re sitting<br \/>\non the edge of your bed.<br \/>\nYou remember your father&#8217;s arms<br \/>\nbrown\u00a0against the white sheets,<br \/>\nthe dry scrape of his breath<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>and you are lost<br \/>\nin the uncountable<br \/>\nspaces of grief<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sharon Phillips<\/strong> retired from a career in education in 2015 and started to write poems and short stories again, after a break of forty years. She lives in Dorset with her husband, two cats and two dogs and is currently doing an MA in creative writing.\u00a0 Sharon\u2019s poems have been published in <i>Snakeskin<\/i>\u00a0and <i>Three Drops from the Cauldron<\/i>, and on A<i>lgebra of Owls <\/i>and <i>Amaryllis.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Counting Imagine that you\u2019re sitting on the edge of your bed. Perhaps you\u2019re shaving your legs. And you see that the floor is covered with dust. Wherever you look there\u2019s dust and the longer you look the more dust there is but you do not fetch the hoover or dustpan because your father [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13710","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13710"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14301,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13710\/revisions\/14301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}