Today’s PAD prompt was to write about “an unexpected mess.” I experience unexpected neatness, now and then, but have no idea what is this “unexpected mess” whereof you speak…<\/p>\n
I learned of black holes from an early age:\r\nMy mother swore her neatness was a sleight of hand,\r\na trick involving rakes and Hefty bags\r\nthat in unseemly haste were shoved atop\r\na mound of mismatched shoes, our dirty clothes,\r\nbehind the winter furs, the musty suits,\r\nan ancient travel case\u2014and yet I knew\r\nthe woman was a witch. I never found\r\nblack plastic bags, leaf-rakes, or detritus.\r\nNeat rows of high-heeled shoes, a make-up bag,\r\na pearl-handled, empty-barreled gun,\r\na hundred matchbook souvenirs, and suits\u2014\r\nmatched smartly with an endless set of ties\r\n(worn once) I'd given Dad for Father's Day.\r\nThat's when I knew the brutal truth, of junk\r\nshe'd rounded up and made to disappear.\r\nCan't say now, was it awe I felt, or fear,\r\nWhen contemplating closets through the years?<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today’s PAD prompt was to write about “an unexpected mess.” I experience unexpected neatness, now and then, but have no idea what is this “unexpected mess” whereof you speak… Detritus at Dawn I learned of black holes from an early age: My mother swore her neatness was a sleight of hand, a trick involving rakes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137990358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[2741],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-137990354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","category-writing","tag-a2z2025"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 07:55:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137990354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137990357,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990354\/revisions\/137990357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137990358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137990354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137990354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137990354"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=137990354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}