<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The head of the table<\/strong><\/p>\n I<\/p>\n During a dinner-time discussion about inter-faith ministers, I consider spilling the bottle of red wine over your shirt.<\/p>\n ‘Imagine a mountain, with many different paths leading to the top. Some of the paths are so far apart, on opposite faces of the mountain, they forget that the other exists.’<\/p>\n In an attempt to respond to this statement, I choke on a piece of spaghetti. I pull it from my throat \u2013<\/p>\n you look at me and frown. ‘Yet all of the paths lead to the same place, the same goal.’<\/p>\n <\/p>\n II<\/p>\n I test the blocks with my little finger. The tower sways each time we exhale from the tension of the game. I decide to go for the middle block, on the second layer to the top. You try to put me off by poking my armpit and you laugh, showing your too-small teeth. I have never liked your teeth.<\/p>\n After three more turns, the tower falls.<\/p>\n We sit in separate armchairs, me by the window and you by the bookcase. Above you is a photograph of your father, speaking. He was a healer, and in his office at the bottom of the garden he kept a monkey who cleaned his shoes and told him when it had been too long since he had spent time with his children.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alana Tomlin<\/strong> recently graduated from the English with Creative Writing BA at\u00a0the\u00a0University of Birmingham and now works in theatre. Her writing has appeared in Nine Arches Press, Under the Radar<\/em>, Sabotage Reviews and in several University publications. Twitter: @alanatomlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The head of the table I During a dinner-time discussion about inter-faith ministers, I consider spilling the bottle of red wine over your shirt. ‘Imagine a mountain, with many different paths leading to the top. Some of the paths are so far apart, on opposite faces of the mountain, they forget that […]<\/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-7061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7061","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=7061"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7063,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7061\/revisions\/7063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}