The First Time

It’s like the first time

you fall in love.

You don’t ever love a woman

quite like that again.

—Montgomery Scott, “Relics”

Star Trek: The Next Generation

They say that love

will hit you hardest

when you're young.

Something that you’ve

never felt before. The flip-

side of seeing someone

in a casket. Visage painted

severely

like some crusty, circus

clown. Stiff as a Barbie

doll. Cold as a Creamsicle.

My heart was thumping

madly like the bass

in Bites the Dust. Swallowing

every nerve in frantic

phlegm. Punching in her

number with a sweat,

checking no one

else was near. Having waited like

the doomed beneath the gallows,

for my sibling to finally

get off the fucking phone.

Her voice like Seraphina, elusive

to even the angel

Gabriel. Did I worship

the mud she stepped in

after school? No. I shovelled it

in my lunch bag, the one I'd

forever reused, a folded

origami, filed it in the

freezer with the soup. It was a

different world, back then.

My wife and I

touch briefly as

we stock the medicine

cabinet. Her smile

when I whisper that

we're taking the same Celexa—

pink, how it’s romantic,

downing them together

after bridge. Her clutching

the Queen of Hearts.

My blowing her a kiss.

This is as good as it gets.

It will always

be enough. Love has nothing

more to give.

Andreas Gripp

August 29, 2025

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