The Lost Hour (standard:romance, 378 words)
Author: Kel	Added: Apr 10 2004	Views/Reads: 3207/3	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
In the lost hour there is a chair by the ocean...

The lost hour 

It's always a fit of sleep. I wake after seeing the chair sitting empty
on the shoreline, and a satin dress discarded between it and the 
incoming tide. Getting closer, I can see footprints for a while, then 
none. Satin caps the waves. 

I strain to catch sight of a shoulderblade, a neck, a back with regular
indentations, but the horribly beautiful moon vanishes. A hand gentles 
me awake, dribbled tears damped the pillow, and the bed becomes ill 
fitting. It is an endless complaint. 

In the kitchen, I drag the kettle to the tap and gaze at myself in the
window. There's a beggar looking back at me. Some nights I avoid him 
completely, not tonight. We're in this lost hour together. The dogs 
look at me from under the table as though I'm their own strangely 
curious dream. A tail wags, but just. 

Red stone tiles on the kitchen floor, black pots and pans, wood frames
with pictures in them, rugs handmade, you would think me a peasant but 
for the double freezer, the dishwasher, and the multi-functional oven. 
The contrast is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. 

The gathering of years clearly shows itself in my beard and on my
temples. I think about death, not what lies beyond. Have I got 
everything in place for those I love? Have I shown the love I have for 
them, not just spoken it, important as that is. Death is always a far 
away subject when enterprise and achievement are goals in life. 

The kettle is not the solution and I flick off the switch before rousing
the dogs. I pull on a sweater, and leave the house. Out here in the 
dark, a symphony stirs in the depths of a world that is as boundless as 
love. Where the chair sat, only a rock stands, crusted and cold. Where 
the dress lay abandoned the dogs now scamper. There is nothing but a 
fleeting vision in the unlived hour. 

My dogs lie at my feet, their bellies wet with salt water. The horrors
of midnight still haunt me. It is just the lost hour, an hour when I 
can hear the whisperings of the celestial tide, whisperings that get me 
past those five minutes of uncertainty. 


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