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Converting the Heathens<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When you\u2019re middle aged,<\/p>\n Religion may occur to you on Fridays<\/p>\n as the ringers swing up\u00a0 ropewards like failed suicides.<\/p>\n You may find yourself prostrate or<\/p>\n falling to your knees in the gardening section,<\/p>\n hallelujah meccabingo, amen to mammon in the frozen aisle.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Child, You are the child of unbelievers:<\/p>\n generation after hopeless generation..<\/p>\n You will need to be taught to pray,<\/p>\n the steeple of the fingers blocking light<\/p>\n the hard bare chairs, the aching knees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You said you weren\u2019t sure how –<\/p>\n I said I hoped you\u2019d never need to learn;<\/p>\n this is the first time kid, let\u2019s not make it a habit of it.<\/p>\n Watch me worship\u2013 I\u2019ll make one match light five candles<\/p>\n then go out into the graveyard, good with sunlight.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sarah Davies<\/strong> is from Merseyside and has been writing, on and off for years. She is a fulltime lecturer and Mum and has been published in several magazines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Converting the Heathens When you\u2019re middle aged, Religion may occur to you on Fridays as the ringers swing up\u00a0 ropewards like failed suicides. You may find yourself prostrate or falling to your knees in the gardening section, hallelujah meccabingo, amen to mammon in the frozen aisle. Child, You are the […]<\/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-7111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111","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=7111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7114,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions\/7114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}