{"id":11331,"date":"2026-07-24T07:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=9939"},"modified":"2026-07-24T07:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:12:16","slug":"advance-always","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/advance-always\/","title":{"rendered":"Advance, Always"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- wp:themify-builder\/canvas \/-->\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I dynamited us. I lied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, you never told me how you really felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You, the anglophile,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">always cooking Italian,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">always said<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was wasting my time teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over and over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You were right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Blue Moon bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Blue Jetta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Blue v-neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think you wore blue lipstick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You suffused the antithesis of the blues and I blew it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nothing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You gave me a thick book of short stories before I left to teach in Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You asked me not to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I only told you \u201cI love you\u201d in my journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think I told you I wanted to become a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wrote a hundred letters to you from Turkey, but they were abstract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The book is long gone. I ripped out the inscription decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It read: <em>Thanks for a wonderful and terrible summer. 1992.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You reached out 31 years later,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">called it a midlife crisis with your girls gone away to adult lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You gave me a glimmer, a sliver of an opening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You reached out, then retreated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">US Grant always said, \u201cadvance, always.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He won.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I dynamited us. I lied. However, you never told me how you really felt. You, the anglophile, always cooking Italian, always said I was wasting my time teaching. Over and over again. You were right. Blue Moon bar. Blue Jetta. Blue v-neck. I think you wore blue lipstick. You suffused the antithesis of the blues [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}