{"id":5684,"date":"2025-04-28T12:51:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T18:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novusliterary.comliterary.com\/?p=5684"},"modified":"2025-04-28T12:51:54","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T18:51:54","slug":"valleys-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/valleys-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Valleys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">Healers have the habit<br>of tending to leprosy<br>in everyone but themselves.<br>I don\u2019t want to be found.<br>I don\u2019t want to be saved.<br>I don\u2019t want to rile up<br>old demons and wounds<br>and burn bridges before<br>I\u2019ve built them.<br><br>I\u2019ve swam deserts and wandered<br>until my lungs heaved heavy<br>from breathing heat and converting<br>lost footpaths into highways<br>for someone else to find.<br>I\u2019m sore and spotted<br>as an uncaged ocelot,<br>hiding in a sullied canyon,<br>growling secrets to stones<br>older than the rings of Saturn,<br>asking if there are still<br>pristine things left to discover.<br><br>There must be.<br><br>Let\u2019s explore the part of you<br>that finds a cave-in concealed from anyone<br>without the secret language to enter.<br>You can whisper open padlocks,<br>rummage up ruins from lost silver cities,<br>unearth doors boarded up from storms<br>long-since passed but warily remembered,<br>their residual terror tattooed in rust.<br>Speak it open in whatever way<br>you imagined conquistadors<br>before you knew better<br>and before you knew memory<br>and before you knew not every heart<br>ached as deeply as yours.<br><br>I can glisten good as any fool,<br>and I can hold onto things<br>heavier than you can carry.<br>And the soft of my mouth will leave you<br>bitten and unafraid, cat-eyed<br>and ripping open,<br>burlap sacks of gold coins<br>like a ceiling of stars finally allowed to rest<br>into their next bright night.<br><br>I\u2019m not that hard to find.<br>Even healers need healing<br>sometimes.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Healers have the habitof tending to leprosyin everyone but themselves.I don\u2019t want to be found.I don\u2019t want to be saved.I don\u2019t want to rile upold demons and woundsand burn bridges beforeI\u2019ve built them.I\u2019ve swam deserts and wandereduntil my lungs heaved heavyfrom breathing heat and convertinglost footpaths into highwaysfor someone else to find.I\u2019m sore and spottedas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"art_contributors":[],"literary_contributors":[419],"class_list":["post-5684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","literary_contributors-owens-kaitlyn"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5685,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5684\/revisions\/5685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5684"},{"taxonomy":"art_contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/art_contributors?post=5684"},{"taxonomy":"literary_contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/literary_contributors?post=5684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}