{"id":13971,"date":"2015-03-07T13:58:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T13:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/offbeatmel-dear-blackout-my-mother-has-never\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T18:02:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T01:02:54","slug":"offbeatmel-dear-blackout-my-mother-has-never","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/offbeatmel-dear-blackout-my-mother-has-never\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-13971 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/offbeatmel-dear-blackout-my-mother-has-never\/attachment\/13972\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_nkt0n9syL71qdl5amo1_1280-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/offbeatmel-dear-blackout-my-mother-has-never\/attachment\/13973\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_nkt0n9syL71qdl5amo3_1280-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/offbeatmel.tumblr.com\/post\/112896806893\/dear-blackout-my-mother-has-never-called-me-by\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">offbeatmel<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h2><b>Dear Blackout<\/b>,<\/h2>\n<p>My mother has never called me by name,\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>she calls me <i>beautiful<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;How was your day, beautiful?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Beautiful, help clean up.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Yes, beautiful?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>And I believed her.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>But then I turned on the tv,<\/p>\n<p>flipped through the magazines,<\/p>\n<p>saw the only thing deemed a \u201cbeauty\u201d<\/p>\n<p>to look nothing like me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>And as all the boys chased my friends,<\/p>\n<p>with flirtatious words, fawning over fair faces,\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>mine received not one glance<\/p>\n<p>not one word<\/p>\n<p>and the silence erased my mother\u2019s words<\/p>\n<p>in a deafening, hollowing way.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>But days like today,<\/p>\n<p>moments like this,<\/p>\n<p>I hear her loud and<\/p>\n<p>clear\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>(once again)<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I see you, beautiful.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I love you, beautiful.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>\u201d<i>Beautiful<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>And so thank you, blackout,<\/p>\n<p>for the reminder,\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>sweet as honey,<\/p>\n<p>warm as my mother\u2019s voice,<\/p>\n<p>that <b>my black is beautiful<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>(You all are beautiful to me.)<\/p>\n<p>-m.g.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>offbeatmel: Dear Blackout, My mother has never called me by name,\u00a0 she calls me beautiful &ldquo;How was your day, beautiful?&rdquo; &ldquo;Beautiful, help clean up.&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, beautiful?&rdquo; And I believed her. But then I turned on the tv, flipped through the magazines, saw the only thing deemed a \u201cbeauty\u201d to look nothing like me.\u00a0 And as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_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":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3Dl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13974,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971\/revisions\/13974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}