<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Daffodils\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Please take away the Egyptian Cotton sheets,<\/p>\n the memory foam mattress-topper.<\/p>\n Give me a room in a house without central heating.<\/p>\n Without daffodils.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Audacious\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 daffodils\u00a0 \u2013<\/p>\n poking through the thick hide of winter days<\/p>\n and nights. Each one a carefully wrapped parcel<\/p>\n containing\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 yellow tongues, lies. They tease.<\/p>\n They\u2019re loud. They are parakeets, each tied<\/p>\n by the ankle to a stone in the bottom of a glass jar.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t stomach their overwrought faces,<\/p>\n their lemon curd light. So<\/em> insensitive. I want<\/p>\n to dunk them in custard. I\u2019m trying to stop myself<\/p>\n from dunking them in a bowl of cold Ambrosia<\/em> custard.<\/p>\n Take them away. Close the door.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Please.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Helen Akers<\/strong> grew up in Hertfordshire and moved to Norfolk to study Fine Art\/Painting at the Norwich School of Art. She began writing poetry in 2003. She has won the Wells-next-the-Sea Poetry Competition and was commended in the CafeWriters Pamphlet Commission Competition in 2009. She has been published in Smiths Knol<\/em>l. She lives in North Norfolk. Helen finds that poetry is the form that can best translate the experience of mental illness, it embraces strangeness and the surreal. Writing through and about mental illness can illuminate this complex and too often misunderstood area of our lives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daffodils\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Please take away the Egyptian Cotton sheets, the memory foam mattress-topper. Give me a room in a house without central heating. Without daffodils.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Audacious\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 daffodils\u00a0 \u2013 poking through the thick hide of winter days and nights. Each one a carefully wrapped parcel containing\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 yellow tongues, lies. They tease. They\u2019re loud. They […]<\/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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16496","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=16496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16582,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16496\/revisions\/16582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}