{"id":10820,"date":"2021-11-21T16:10:05","date_gmt":"2021-11-21T23:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=10820"},"modified":"2021-11-21T16:13:13","modified_gmt":"2021-11-21T23:13:13","slug":"the-boy-who-ran-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=10820","title":{"rendered":"The Boy Who Ran Away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Saint-John the Baptist by Michaelina Wautier, 17th century<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Marge Simon<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\nHistories were told in the dry prairie winds\nthat swept the sandy dirt from here to there and back.\nLost are those masters, the old aristocrats.\nHow they doted on the old building, the museum,\nlike a shrine. The treasure they held in trust\nfor their lineage into an unknown future,\na monument to their legacy.\n\nCame the spoilers, on their razor-spined mounts,\ngrinding fleeing bodies into the crushed prairie grass.\nThey plundered every shrine, \nstealing even the shining amber eyes of the stuffed beasts,\nsilver shafts and diamond needles\nto make more tools of butchery.\nWhen that was done, there were no children left\nexcept the boy, and he was a slave-child.\n\nHis mother despaired on a daily basis.\nShe jumped at every sound\nin the ruined house they lived in,\nonce their master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stately home, now theirs.\nNot that much of dignity remained,\ntheir only mirror was the pond,\ntheir only meat, the fish within it.\nWhen she yelled at him, whether angry\nor driven to tears, it only made things worse.\nThe boy would chase the rats off for her,\nflinging stones with more rage\nthan duty called for.\n\nThe boy had his own place where he could\nforget, for a long afternoon, the ache\nof hunger, the gnaw of fear.\nHe would run there\nevery time she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t looking.\n\nIn the old museum, vines trailed down\nfrom the gaping tears in the roof.\nA shaft of sunlight fell on the last dead beast,\npreserved, with its empty-socket gaze, \nher coat stained, rain spotted,\nno longer bristling with the sheen of life.\nThis mighty cat, frozen in motion, was his steed.\nFor him, she would bend down her graceful head\nto whisper those things a boy most needs:\n\nRide me, ride me past the shadows,\nthe ghost wars of angry men,\nand burning prairie grass.\nWe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll go to the far horizon,\nwhere none could know what\nthe brand on your wrist means.\n\nFree, free, no need to hide\ninside these rotting walls \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\nfreed by rite of youth to ride,\nyour face ablaze with sunlight.<\/em>\n\nSo came a day, he did,\nwith his crazy mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s litany of self-pity\nechoing in his ears, always too many sharp,\nhurting things to bear, shredding hope,\nsharing her pain over and over,\nhe ran away.\n\nOnce, he stopped to look back  \nupon the broken buildings and fallow land.\nA man could heal his mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wounds,\na man could rebuild.\nBut he was just a boy,\nso he ran on.<\/font><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marge Simon Histories were told in the dry prairie winds that swept the sandy dirt from here to there and back. Lost are those masters, the old aristocrats. How they doted on the old building, the museum, like a shrine. The treasure they held in trust for their lineage into an unknown future, a monument […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10820"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10826,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10820\/revisions\/10826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}