-Untitled, Photo by Colette Saint Yves
25 February 2024
'The First Hour'
CATHERINE GRANT
They have kidnapped my stomach, heart, and soul.
“What are you having for dinner?”
This scorches into my soul, but what will I have for dinner?
A small but meaningful question, will we share our childhood fears or thirteen-year-old handwriting?
I’ve known you for an hour, I know your scent, song, your heartbeat ….
What a strange familiarity, we have the same shoes, we have the same smile.
You have Diet Coke; I have diet coke.
Will you bleed through my words?
I stand in your room as you bear your soul to me, you show me your new dress.
“Do you want to watch tv?”
Do you want to share my loneliness?
Three years it has taken me to speak in my new school, three years it has taken me to read the script of your person.
Yet I know you.
I know the top she will wear; I know the perfume she will spray; I see the mistakes you constantly make again and again and again.
We have become a unit, I know what you will say, I understand your silence, I enjoy your laugh.
The closeness has engulfed me, God! How strange it is to be one with a stranger and feel their being.