<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gestation Period<\/strong><\/p>\n These days have become a knife swinging legs as I take my bath. any organic protection: epidermis, Tomorrow I will cleave the muscle back And here will be revealed the ruby casket <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wendy Pratt<\/strong> lives and works in North Yorkshire. Her first collection, Nan Hardwick Turns into a Hare<\/em> was published by Prolebooks in late 2011 and was well received, her next, full sized, collection, Museum Pieces<\/em>, which will go to print December 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gestation Period These days have become a knife to pare away my skin. Each morning the same routine: the child with her red hair and green eyes watches, swinging legs as I take my bath. She folds back the pages of the book I\u2019m reading so I see nothing past her. She is […]<\/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-5061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061","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=5061"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5064,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061\/revisions\/5064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nto pare away my skin. Each morning
\nthe same routine: the child
\nwith her red hair and green eyes watches,<\/p>\n
\nShe folds back the pages of the book
\nI\u2019m reading so I see nothing past her.
\nShe is stripping my skin away, unravelling<\/p>\n
\ndermis, hypo-epidermis-
\neach day another layer, the way
\nthat pencil sharpenings peel into a waste bin.<\/p>\n
\nto see if I am really there.\u00a0 Then I\u2019ll unknot
\nthe tendons, fold them down like rigging to the bones
\nuntil there\u2019s nothing left to part with.<\/p>\n
\nrolling back and forth within the hollow crater
\nof my pelvis. The beautiful inverted pear,
\nthe one place I dare not open, fearing its emptiness.<\/p>\n