Letters from the Pandemic 28: Dear Geryon

Dear Geryon
by Griffin Tedeschini

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Dear Geryon

“What is time made of?”
This, your favourite question, trails behind me, thin free shadow.
This pandemic robs me of anchor points, no solidity to hang memory on.
Instead, time calibrates by his growth, when he loses his puppy teeth, his first eruption of a bark.
He is the best part of this time.
Walks under orange pink sunset.
His first venture into the ocean, surprise and then exhilaration.
Tag with water, an advance, a retreat.

Time hinges on him now, not me.
I am the same.
Sleep, eat, work, study.
Repeat.
Yet, I see time grow and shift as his coat changes colour (his a brown cream swirl, unlike your joyful red companion).
Soft waves break into curls.

There is something beautiful in him sleeping in my lap.
White paw twitches as dream rushes through his body.
Quiet. Still. Safe.
Small body presses against me.
I wonder who is protecting who.

Geryon, time is made of beginnings, and endings, and the love that fills the void in between.

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Griffin Tedeschini is a writer of poetry, spoken word, and fiction. In 2015, they were on the Calgary Poetry Slam Team that participated in the national spoken word festival. The past six years have seen them explore both the Calgary and Vancouver poetry slam scenes, as well as the local story slam events. They have been a feature poet at events in Calgary, and has participated locally in the Verses festival. They were a feature poet on Vancouver Co-Op Radio’s Wax Poetic, as well as a feature storyteller in their series Terminal City Tales. As well, they were a finalist in the Vancouver Story Slam Championship in 2017, and came in third at the Verses Festival of Words – Vancouver Story Slam Invitation Verses 2018 Edition. A graduate of SFU’s The Writer’s Studio (TWS), and currently enrolled in Graduate, Liberal Studies at SFU, Griffin continues to explore the alchemy of prose and poetry, inspired by their idol Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red.

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