The Lost Hour (standard:romance, 303 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: May 22 2006	Views/Reads: 3772/3	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Do we dream...or do we return from something we needed to understand?

The Lost Hour 

© Kelly_Shaw2001 

It's always after a fit of sleep, waking after standing next to an empty
chair on the shoreline, a satin dress discarded between it and the 
incoming tide, bulging like a stranded jellyfish. I see footprints for 
a while, then none. Satin caps the waves. 

I strain hoping to catch sight of a shoulder blade, a neck, a back with
all the regular indentations, but the horribly beautiful moon vanishes 
and my bed becomes ill fitting. It is an endless complaint. 

In the kitchen I drag the kettle to the tap, gaze at myself in the
window and observe a beggar staring back. Some nights I avoid him 
completely, not tonight, we're in this lost hour together. My dog cocks 
his head and stares up at me, making no effort to come out from under 
the table. Perhaps I'm his strangely curious dream. 

Red stone tiles cool my feet, black pots and pans stand on paint
stripped shelves, wooden frames with pictures in them adorn walls, 
handmade rugs are worn and tattered. You'd think me a peasant but for 
the double freezer, the dishwasher, and the multi-functional oven. The 
contrast is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. 

The kettle is not the solution and I flick off the switch before pulling
on a loved 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 petticoat waves now break. There is nothing left but the 
fleeting vision of the unlived hour. The horror of midnight still 
haunts me. It's just the lost hour; an hour when the whispering of a 
celestial tide gets me passed those five minutes of uncertainty. 


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