Dream Memory Regret

by porkerwholes

Chapter 1

His chest rises and falls in his sleep. 

His mind is in a deep sleep.

He is in her deep. 

First he moans and then groans. In his mind he can feel the smoothness of her skin and the suppleness of her lips. It is so different to what he has to feel now. Wrinkles and skin like leather.

He doesn’t finish before he wakes.

He sighs and rolls over on his bed.

He reaches his nightstand and remembers his life.

He shudders.

He holds the picture of them on their honeymoon. 

Tight in his hand.

1981.

His hardness quakes despite his age.

Chapter 2

Her birthday passes and Charles wakes with a fright.
He misses her supple youth and supine posture.
He turns in bed, his mind knows: his second wife is gone.
She's never there.
He feels the cold where a warm body should reside.
His hands running up and down the chilled sheets.
He sighs as he misses the mother of his sons.
He sighs to the loss of his family.
And for what?
For naught.
For a woman who doesn't share his bed.
For a woman who doesn't share his home.
For a woman who doesn't share his progeny.
For a woman who only takes.
A tear falls from his eyes.
It rolls down his chest and only stops at the lump.
His chemotherapy port.
He considers if he deserves this.

Chapter 3: Their anniversary

Their anniversary passes. A day of memory at the end of the month.
He’s left behind again. His current wife in name only again off to a foreign land without inviting him.
He suspects she’s hiding her true love, the love she always keeps burning for her ex.
He turns his attention to his.
He remembers her dress and its yards of fabric.
Her smile. It was shy, sweet, virginal.
Reserved only for him.
Unlike now.
He shifts in his chair and feels the ache of his back. Old age.
How lucky he is to experience it at all he reminds himself, again remembering her limited years.
In his mind he can smell her and feel the soft supple give of her beautiful young skin.
Their wedding night. He sighs.
He remembers holding her and seeing the sapphire on her finger reflected in the blinding beauty of her eyes as he took her and made her his wife.
His longing rises and quakes.
The Goddess of Hunt returns to his lustful thoughts as he feels himself responded in ways he hasn’t for months.

Chapter 4

His sigh sounds out across the empty room.
Alone again, his mind asks with sharpness. His fingers trace the outlines of a sapphire cuff link. The colour of her eyes. The colour of their engagement ring.
The colour of their promise.
How did he get it all so wrong.
He contemplates every decision as he sits. Alone in his chair.
Alone in his castle.
Alone in his life.
He looks at a newspaper and balls it up. Throws it into the fire.
His second wife is off on a yacht. She never asked him to join. She’s off with what she calls her family.
Her first husband. Her children. Their children. Her grandchildren. Their grandchildren.
As she tells him and the press. He is not the they in their.
Such cruelness.
He remembers how he risked his family for her.
He is repaid by solitude and public jibes.
Tonight he must swallow his thoughts.
He needs to put on a face for the world in a few days. Yet his mind relays this over and again.