<\/p>\n
Quiet herself<\/strong><\/p>\n She is not herself <\/p>\n Anthony Langford<\/strong> grew up in the country but now lives in Sydney with his baby daughter and three step children. He has had numerous works published, including in the Verandah 25th Anniversary Edition. His novella Bottomless River<\/em> is out now through Ginninderra Press. Stories, poems and video poems at www.anthonyjlangford.com <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Quiet herself She is not herself They say She is saying things She would not normally say They excuse her for it For the time being at least Yet If they thought about it a little more They would know That she can only ever be herself That these thoughts exist already Her defences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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-3726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726","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=3726"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3755,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726\/revisions\/3755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThey say
\nShe is saying things
\nShe would not normally say
\nThey excuse her for it
\nFor the time being at least
\nYet
\nIf they thought about it a little more
\nThey would know
\nThat she can only ever be herself
\nThat these thoughts exist already
\nHer defences are down
\nI guarantee
\nThat she has said similar before
\nIf not here
\nSomewhere else
\nShe can only ever be herself
\nAnd we know this about ourselves
\nWe may lose our control
\nThe guard leaves the post
\nAnd things are said
\nAnd done
\nBut it\u2019s always there
\nInside
\nA mammoth soup bowl
\nOf words and ideas and feelings
\nThat was accidentally
\nSneezed out
\nYou can only ever be yourself
\nThings will shift around
\nOver the years
\nFrom here to there
\nAlways present
\nAnd you know it
\nLike I do
\nWhether we acknowledge it
\nOn the surface
\nDoesn\u2019t matter
\nIn the end
\nThe ingredients were placed there
\nIn the beginning
\nSo the balance wasn\u2019t quite right
\nThis time around
\nAnd that will change
\nOnce more
\nBut at least now we know
\nWho we\u2019re dealing with.<\/p>\n