{"id":6054,"date":"2026-04-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/?p=6054"},"modified":"2026-04-01T23:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T04:11:09","slug":"freeze-tag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/freeze-tag\/","title":{"rendered":"Freeze Tag"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">              <em>Sobriety: Day 90<br><\/em><br>You\u2019re told it's a benchmark. Like a toddler<br>pointing. Practically developmental. <br>A sign the brain is knitting together,<br>picking back up where it left off. <br>\u201cMaturing stops at the point of addiction,\u201d<br>as if the brain had been caught and rooted in place<br>in a game of freeze tag, waiting for someone<br>to crawl through its legs. You shouldn\u2019t be so<br>offended. You\u2019re the one who would look at<br>your wife and tell her with solemn sincerity,<br>uncapped marker still in your hand,<br>that you didn\u2019t draw on the wall.<br>And like a child, you need recognition<br>so you text \u201c90 days!\u201d and when she texts back<br>a single emoji\u2014meager scrap for the gaunt street dog<br>your soul has become\u2014the anger you\u2019ve nursed<br>in dark rooms burns its way out. You complain<br>that no one is praising you for what you\u2019re not doing,<br>and are caught off balance when she gives it right back,<br>telling you how long she\u2019s been running,<br>circling your unresponsive statue,<br>watching for any chance to unfreeze you. <br><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sobriety: Day 90You\u2019re told it&#8217;s a benchmark. Like a toddlerpointing. Practically developmental. A sign the brain is knitting together,picking back up where it left off. \u201cMaturing stops at the point of addiction,\u201das if the brain had been caught and rooted in placein a game of freeze tag, waiting for someoneto crawl through its legs. You [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"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":[470],"class_list":["post-6054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","literary_contributors-rutter-chad"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6054","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\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6054"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6056,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6054\/revisions\/6056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6054"},{"taxonomy":"art_contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/art_contributors?post=6054"},{"taxonomy":"literary_contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/literary_contributors?post=6054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}