6.03 / March 2011

That Small Small Inch

You thought it was the oddest setting. You thought it was the strangest place to meet: a phone box. I said, I am very fond of this one. You looked at me like that again. Don’t look at me like that, I said back to you, my nose an inch from yours inside this joyful phone box. I did grin then, to demonstrate that this was fun, a date. You didn’t grin right back, as if you thought, Oh no, one of these spirits has gone inside her, what will she do now and next and after that and me here just a small small inch away? I heard you think that, really I did, we were pressing stomach to stomach. Feel it! I said to you then, and then my hunger made itself too clear. You did smile then and reached your hand across that inch and put it on my tummy. Does your phone box have coffee or cake? you said then, but your fingers on my cardigan which was only milimetres from the skin below had sent me flapping, all of me, and every warmth a spark a burst of red delight that I could no longer talk. I looked it into you instead, looked my words into your eyes and then, oh then, you heard it clear and, crossed that small small inch once more, this time with your mouth.


A former science journalist, Tania Hershman's first book, The White Road and Other Stories, was commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers, and included in New Scientist's Best Books of 2008. Tania's second collection, My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions, will be published in May 2012 by Tangent Books. She is currently writer-in-residence in Bristol University's Science Faculty, working on a collection of biology-inspired short fiction. http://www.taniahershman.com
6.03 / March 2011

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