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Civilization<\/strong><\/p>\n The bleaching reek of sulphur remains but I have manufactured strings enough for a month or two.\u00a0 With each shorter day the solar panels work a little less and voices, not vehicles, dominate the early dark outside.\u00a0 In a last, desperate search of the travelling market I discovered a much washed, but intact, black dress.\u00a0 It is soft and silent and deflects attention from me; this is the first time that I will be there alone.<\/p>\n Only what I do should be seen.<\/p>\n Tonight is one of the last nights that we will spend in the open before the cold. We gather while we can at the ruin of the city\u2019s centre.\u00a0 The concrete bones and stairways are all that remain of the high rise block that still dominates the sky.<\/p>\n I begin the climb through the building, leaving the streets still busy with people.<\/p>\n LED lamps brighten the steps at intervals but on the roof we save the stored light and favour candles. The leftovers of the industrial age must be relished; they will not come again in my time.\u00a0 Anxiety shortens my stride.\u00a0 They crowd around the place where I will sit, a circle of ten or twelve deep. I unpack my things.\u00a0 My mother used to tell us that the sun\u2019s heat went to another world as summer ended but tonight I see it in the fading moon and the emotion it reveals in peoples\u2019 faces.<\/p>\n Recently polished, and restrung, my mandolin has a clear voice.\u00a0 For a minute my knees shake though the notes still fly. An inverted chord, an improvisation and the sense of travel takes me.\u00a0 The melody moves outwards and answers its own refrain as they travel together, reinventing and redefining the long tale of this year.<\/p>\n When I return, with the final phrase, they are clapping.\u00a0 I can see the nearest faces smiling.\u00a0 This will be the first payment for my passion.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Scarred by early success fitting cartoon feet to yoghurt pots Rebecca Sowray<\/strong> ran away.\u00a0 She lives the ordinary dream, getting high on radio-noise before sharpening her words. Civilization The bleaching reek of sulphur remains but I have manufactured strings enough for a month or two.\u00a0 With each shorter day the solar panels work a little less and voices, not vehicles, dominate the early dark outside.\u00a0 In a last, desperate search of the travelling market I discovered a much washed, […]<\/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-7564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564","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=7564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7566,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions\/7566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTalk nonsense to her on twitter @RedStar240 or find her fictions at http:\/\/rebeccasowray.wordpress.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"