{"id":28,"date":"2009-04-11T20:59:22","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T03:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=28"},"modified":"2009-04-11T20:59:22","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T03:59:22","slug":"laura-bradburys-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/?p=28","title":{"rendered":"Laura Bradbury&#8217;s Bones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Barbara Sweeney<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It was easy for me to imagine<br \/>\nyour mother assembling your pitiful details:<br \/>\nD.O.B., last-seen-wearing, date and place<br \/>\nof abduction, the picture of your round face<br \/>\nthat would never age<br \/>\npast three-and-a-half.<br \/>\nYou were the same age then as my daughter,<br \/>\nthe same thick blonde hair<br \/>\ncropped like a bowl.\u00a0 My daughter, who now does three-place multiplication<br \/>\nand sings the lead in the sixth grade play.<\/p>\n<p>Salty, sickening, a kinship of fear<br \/>\nforms around every woman who thinks she protects<br \/>\nher own children by searching for ones<br \/>\nwho are lost.<br \/>\nI kept up my vigil.<br \/>\nwatched for you in passing cars,<br \/>\nin crowds at the circus.<br \/>\nI followed the screams of children in closed up vans<br \/>\nto make sure they weren\u2019t yours.<\/p>\n<p>You turned up &#8211;<br \/>\nnot as a twelve-year-old<br \/>\non the brink of the sixth grade,<br \/>\nbut as a small, perfect skull<br \/>\nnot far from the desert restroom<br \/>\nwhere your brother probably said,<br \/>\n\u201cWait here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And like opening a child\u2019s lunch box<br \/>\nat the end of the day,<br \/>\nyour mother turns at last to find<br \/>\nthe hard parts uneaten.<br \/>\nThe thermos<br \/>\ndry as a bone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Barbara Sweeney It was easy for me to imagine your mother assembling your pitiful details: D.O.B., last-seen-wearing, date and place of abduction, the picture of your round face that would never age past three-and-a-half. You were the same age then as my daughter, the same thick blonde hair cropped like a bowl.\u00a0 My daughter, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laura_bradburys_bones","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/basweeney.com\/writings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}