<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The year I grew tomatoes\u00a0<\/span> United Kingdom<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Miranda Cichy The year I grew tomatoes\u00a0 I had no understanding\u00a0 that my body was failing,\u00a0 how the plants needed\u00a0 more earth than I could give them, out in the yard on a concrete bed,\u00a0 hunkered in pots\u00a0 the size of my skull. I\u00a0 fed them too early, I forgot to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,102,15,18,20],"class_list":["post-3588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthology","tag-body","tag-distress","tag-loss","tag-strangeness","tag-time","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bHTD-VS","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3589,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588\/revisions\/3589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n I had no understanding\u00a0<\/span>
\n that my body was failing,\u00a0<\/span>
\n how the plants needed\u00a0<\/span>
\n more earth than I could give them,<\/span>
\n out in the yard<\/span>
\n on a concrete bed,\u00a0<\/span>
\n hunkered in pots\u00a0<\/span>
\n the size of my skull. I\u00a0<\/span>
\n fed them too early, I<\/span>
\n forgot to pierce<\/span>
\n the container holes<\/span>
\n and June drowned them.<\/span>
\n You can try too hard<\/span>
\n to care for something,<\/span>
\n and I watched through\u00a0<\/span>
\n the dusty window<\/span>
\n as the summer shifted,<\/span>
\n as my body took\u00a0<\/span>
\n a spade to itself, dug\u00a0<\/span>
\n and re-dug, broke\u00a0<\/span>
\n roots until the soil was raw.\u00a0<\/span>
\n Good days unfurl\u00a0<\/span>
\n in bad years<\/span>
\n like yellow flowers, sometimes\u00a0<\/span>
\n the fruit does set. But<\/span>
\n the tomatoes I picked<\/span>
\n were swollen, their faces<\/span>
\n multiplied, the seeds like grit,<\/span>
\n stems bending from the sticks\u00a0<\/span>
\n that were meant to hold them up.<\/span><\/p>\n\n