{"id":25449,"date":"2025-03-27T13:48:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T17:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=25449"},"modified":"2025-04-09T10:53:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T14:53:57","slug":"flower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/flower\/","title":{"rendered":"Flower"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"position: relative; padding-top: max(60%,326px); height: 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; border: none; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23d5d5d5&amp;d=portland_magazine_april_2025&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=96&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" sandbox=\"allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation allow-downloads allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-modals allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-forms\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">By Suzanne Strempek Shea<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">She was pounding on my door again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cFlower!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">I came to Portland from a Massachusetts village where we never locked doors or anything. But now I was living in a city, because that\u2019s where art schools are, including mine. I\u2019d graduated high school and soon would be an adult, whether I knew how to do that or not. In that Bicentennial year, I was declaring my own independence, though an army of one. My parents let me come here yet phoned weekly to warn about crooks and perverts and remind me I didn\u2019t know how to live in a city.<\/p>\n<p><em>Read the full story in the digital magazine above.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25451\" src=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Flower_Fiction.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"536\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Flower_Fiction.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Flower_Fiction-980x513.jpg 980w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Flower_Fiction-480x251.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fiction: Suzanne Strempek Shea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,112],"tags":[1495],"class_list":["post-25449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-fiction","tag-april-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25449"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25481,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25449\/revisions\/25481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}