{"id":319,"date":"2011-07-19T17:01:47","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T17:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=319"},"modified":"2011-07-19T17:01:47","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T17:01:47","slug":"cynthia-ruth-lewiss-diluted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/cynthia-ruth-lewiss-diluted\/","title":{"rendered":"Cynthia Ruth Lewis's 'Diluted'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diluted<\/span>

Blinded in the supermarket, walking dumbly through the<\/span>
aisles, packing my cart high with sustenance; steaks,<\/span>
breads, cakes, hoping to put some flesh back on your<\/span>
whittled frame, hoping your sudden plunge in weight is<\/span>
nothing serious, not the unspoken “C,” certainly, hoping<\/span>
the tests come back negative, praying your three-times-a-day<\/span>
loose bowels are due to some strange kind of flu, thinking <\/span>
I can entice your appetite again with all this food as I<\/span>
pile the cart higher and higher until it is spilling over<\/span>
with hope, adding melons to the mess, fingers tightening<\/span>
around their wholeness, the sweet perfection within as I<\/span>
watch children playing, running from their mother's shouts,<\/span>
using cucumbers as pistols, their innocent ignorant bliss<\/span>
a knife in my ribs, twisting every so subtly.  I advance,<\/span>
numbly, to the check-out line, seeing people laugh amongst <\/span>
themselves, bantering about recipes, grandchildren and<\/span>
holiday gifts. I am a foreigner; amiss, not understanding<\/span>
their words and grins, and I'm fighting like hell not to<\/span>
break like glass, just shatter at their feet when the clerk<\/span>
hands me the receipt and says “Have a good Christmas,” and<\/span>
I bite my tongue to keep the tears from coming, biting down<\/span>
hard until I can taste the blood, and only when I can escape<\/span>
to the hooded density of my car do I let it go, the tears<\/span>
running new and hot, diluting the blood, the salt making it<\/span>
bearable, making it taste just a little bit better.<\/span>



*Cynthia Ruth Lewis<\/span> currently lives in Sacramento, Ca.  Her work has appeared in <\/span>Nerve Cowboy, Canopic Jar, My Favorite Bullet<\/span>, and others. <\/span>

Diluted <\/span>has previously appeared in <\/span>Underground Voices<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DilutedBlinded in the supermarket, walking dumbly through theaisles, packing my cart high with sustenance; steaks,breads, cakes, hoping to put some flesh back on yourwhittled frame, hoping your sudden plunge in weight isnothing serious, not the unspoken “C,” certainly, hopingthe tests come back negative, praying your three-times-a-dayloose bowels are due to some strange kind of flu, […]<\/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-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","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=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}