{"id":238,"date":"2020-09-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"grey-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/28\/grey-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Grey streets"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The balloons were red-<br \/>\nred balloons against<br \/>\nan orange sunset<br \/>\nrising like angels<br \/>\nfloating to high skies<br \/>\ncelebrated us <br \/>\nmore honestly than<br \/>\nlast night&#8217;s masquerade <br \/>\nof a party had. <\/p>\n<p>Between pen and ink, <br \/>\nplain paper and screens, <br \/>\nI&#8217;ve lived a thousand<br \/>\nraw snowflake lifetimes. <br \/>\nBut nowhere in that<br \/>\nvast expanse of white<br \/>\ndid I dream of this<br \/>\nreality check. <\/p>\n<p>Late nights, weeks or worlds<br \/>\napart, we&#8217;d sailed on<br \/>\nuntil my text beeps<br \/>\nwere background noise and <br \/>\ntraffic drowned your calls. <br \/>\n&#8216;I&#8217;ll call you back&#8217; was<br \/>\nthe grey cloud cushion;<br \/>\nthe lie I sat on. <\/p>\n<p>When finality <br \/>\nstruck like rogue lightning<br \/>\nblue, gold and twisted, <br \/>\nthe air smelled of burnt decades<br \/>\nand indifference. <br \/>\nThe fall was gentle<br \/>\nbecause time stood still. <br \/>\nIt rained like the world<br \/>\nwere ending that night. <\/p>\n<p>Sad balloons wagged strings<br \/>\nlike restless puppies<br \/>\ncaged by the ceiling. <br \/>\nRose bouquets sprinkled<br \/>\nwith fake fragrances<br \/>\nlay strewn on the floor<br \/>\nalong with broken <br \/>\nbottles of champagne. <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re tainted saints now, <br \/>\nreeking of errors<br \/>\njust like humans do. <br \/>\nSo I let them go,<br \/>\nthe balloons and us,<br \/>\nfrom the balcony<br \/>\non the north west with<br \/>\na seventh floor view. <\/p>\n<p>I watched them soar high<br \/>\ninto the scarlet<br \/>\nsunset, like throbbing<br \/>\nhearts finally free. <br \/>\nYou looked up from the<br \/>\nproud grey street below. <\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The balloons were red-  red balloons against  an orange sunset  rising like angels  floating to high skies  celebrated us   more honestly than  last night&#8217;s masquerade   of a party had.     Between pen and ink,   plain paper and screens,   I&#8217;ve lived&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}