{"id":981,"date":"2007-03-16T20:07:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-16T20:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=981"},"modified":"2007-03-16T20:07:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-16T20:07:00","slug":"high-by-padrika-tarrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/high-by-padrika-tarrant\/","title":{"rendered":"High by Padrika Tarrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

High<\/span>

For today, if you like, I'll be a girl.  I'll have two hands for you, and, let me see, I'll have brown hair, long hair that isn't brushed and flicks into my eyes unless I hold my head to the side.  If it makes you happy then I'll be seventeen years old.  I will wear icewashed jeans; I'll carry a windproof lighter, which I stole.  I'll even have a name if you want.  Why not call me Sarah.  I'm not changing my eyes though; I'm keeping those.<\/span>

        Yesterday, and the day before that, I was a magpie, turning on thermals like a black and white kite in air.  My mind was small and sharp as a craftknife tip, and red.  When I spread my feathers, I could scribble poems in the air, so clever and so sad that the people in the market didn't know that I was there.  Before you made me sit and talk to you, before these pills, I was nothing but a pair of wings in the sky.<\/span>

        Before today I was quick as silver, and I knew the secret things that hide among the city's pieces.  When I was a bird, I was cunning and magic, and a mystery to the world.  Before you gave me a blanket to wear, I was narrow like a dart; I could throw myself at people's heads, and spin away at the very last moment and vanish.<\/span>

        From the top of the town hall clock, the world is flat and hardly there.  The sky is a landscape, huge, invisible, made of light and music, with great empty cathedrals and mountain ranges.  I knocked my head on an outcrop of nothing, smacked against the gusting morning, and I fell.  If you want, we can pretend that I'm a girl, just until my wings are mended.<\/span>


\u2022 Broken things and broken people: a woman becomes a gas explosion; a kitchen knife crawls after a little girl to keep her safe; and an old lady hears her mother calling from a cupboard.<\/span>

Broken Things<\/span> is a collection of short fiction by Padrika Tarrant. It will be released in September 2007 by SALT Publishing. Full details at <\/span>http:\/\/saltpublishing.com\/books\/smf\/9781844713431.htm<\/a>

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HighFor today, if you like, I'll be a girl.  I'll have two hands for you, and, let me see, I'll have brown hair, long hair that isn't brushed and flicks into my eyes unless I hold my head to the side.  If it makes you happy then I'll be seventeen years old.  I will wear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}