{"id":1030,"date":"2024-07-31T21:10:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T02:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2024-08-04T11:33:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-04T16:33:27","slug":"i-will-not-drink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/2024\/07\/i-will-not-drink\/","title":{"rendered":"I Will Not Drink"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

I will not drink<\/span><\/p>\n

on my twenty-first birthday.<\/span><\/p>\n

My uncle picked up a Coke-<\/span><\/p>\n

and-rum in 1993<\/span><\/p>\n

and has yet to put it down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fingers melted into glass.<\/span><\/p>\n

I cut myself back<\/span><\/p>\n

to one cup of coffee a day,<\/span><\/p>\n

sometimes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother becomes quiet<\/span><\/p>\n

when my brothers’ chug<\/span><\/p>\n

beer on family vacations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They hold their cans<\/span><\/p>\n

like my grandfather,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

American sniper steadiness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My father wants to take us<\/span><\/p>\n

to Las Vegas next autumn<\/span><\/p>\n

to celebrate my new legal right,<\/span><\/p>\n

but I know I would stand,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

sober, in a neon corner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cash tucked in my pocket.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bubbled water in hand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Studying the red-faced images<\/span><\/p>\n

of who I could be<\/span><\/p>\n

if I just grew up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My grandfather died drunk,<\/span><\/p>\n

and fell backwards from a tree.<\/span><\/p>\n

I imagine my bruised grandmother\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

cheering<\/span><\/p>\n

over his pomegranate spilled insides.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

I will not drink on my twenty-first birthday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,3],"tags":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1616,"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions\/1616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sagebrushreview.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}