{"id":5592,"date":"2024-02-08T03:17:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T08:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/?p=5592"},"modified":"2024-02-08T09:14:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T14:14:52","slug":"skeptical-of-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/poetry\/skeptical-of-september\/","title":{"rendered":"Skeptical of September"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Art<\/a>
Art by Karam Sutham<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carved into the calendar of my mind<\/p>\n

and every sinew of my muscle<\/p>\n

are the days of late September.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There exist the memories of him and marks<\/p>\n

of tears cried in silence and minds gone astray<\/p>\n

of newspapers he ordered in secret and soiled shoes<\/p>\n

of spam calls and spring colds<\/p>\n

of musty brown rugs and unplugged headphones<\/p>\n

of grapefruit chapstick and fizzing ginger beer<\/p>\n

of full moons and orange construction paper<\/p>\n

of how life once was and can always become.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I wish I could lure the memories<\/p>\n

from every fissure of my brain<\/p>\n

draw them into the light<\/p>\n

and leave them to decay,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but I know they are as much a part of me<\/p>\n

as my own two hands<\/p>\n

as is he<\/p>\n

and I fear what I am<\/p>\n

without them,<\/p>\n

without him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So I have tried to gather those memories close to me,<\/p>\n

and remember the blue packs of American Spirit cigarettes<\/p>\n

long walks in darkened woods<\/p>\n

boxes of new computers and phones<\/p>\n

rebooting the television in silence<\/p>\n

and dancing cartoon clowns and cats in bright pastels,<\/p>\n

I nurse them sweetly in the palms of my heart,<\/p>\n

and make them feast at my table.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to make friends with the enemies of my mind,<\/p>\n

to exist in the marrow of fractured bones,<\/p>\n

and swim in the warmth of their infections<\/p>\n

until I have exhausted myself to sickness,<\/p>\n

a sickness that will lay my body and mind<\/p>\n

to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Carved into the calendar of my mind and every sinew of my muscle are the days of late September.   There exist the memories of him and marks of tears cried in silence and minds gone astray of newspapers he ordered in secret and soiled shoes of spam calls and spring colds of musty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":713,"featured_media":5593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[559],"class_list":{"0":"post-5592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-poetry","8":"tag-relationships","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/713"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}