{"id":244,"date":"2020-12-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"smoke-rings-and-fine-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/24\/smoke-rings-and-fine-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoke rings and fine lines"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Red, yellow and amber streaks <br \/>\nand blurred neons of car lights<br \/>\ncoloured the streets post sundown, <br \/>\nwhile dark shadows played hopscotch. <br \/>\nMoths, like dusky dames with the<br \/>\nfatal flaw of being born<br \/>\nwith wings, danced the streetlight death.<br \/>\nCar horns and street chatter drowned<br \/>\nthe silent seconds observed<br \/>\nin their memory, and yours, <br \/>\nas I raised the warm milk tea<br \/>\nto my lips, in cold prayer.<br \/>\nLovers shared a cigarette<br \/>\non the sidewalk, under the<br \/>\nold tree with the gnarly roots. <\/p>\n<p>A sudden gust let the smoke<br \/>\ndrift like the early twenties-<br \/>\nslow, meandering and lost, <br \/>\nto the only empty chair<br \/>\nin the small sidewalk cafe. <br \/>\nIt faced me meekly with its <br \/>\npatches of rust and blue paint. <br \/>\nI watched as a stray black cat<br \/>\nshot out from under that seat, <br \/>\nand fixed his green eyes on me<br \/>\nfor a few seconds before<br \/>\nvanishing into the crowd, <br \/>\nlike footfalls in the future. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Red, yellow and amber streaks   and blurred neons of car lights  coloured the streets post sundown,   while dark shadows played hopscotch.   Moths, like dusky dames with the  fatal flaw of being born  with wings, danced the streetlight death.  Car ho&#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\/244"}],"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=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajulea.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}