Chapter one: Someplace long ago

~CHAPTER ONE ~

Someplace long ago, a memory sits, at the bar, nursing a rum and coke, listening to a song, bringing back a faded memory.

June.

I was dying, or so I thought.

I guess in retrospect, we're all dying, we're born dying, from that first breathe we take to that last, we're dying.

We tried living once, someplace fancy, the mindless wonderings  of distant dreams, thrown against the wall, the light spectral memories of distant shores, was this reality or just a dream projected?

I was 18 when the world began to make no sense. I was sitting at the bar when she approached, it was a beautiful day with her beautiful eyes, she held my hand, drove me wild, she whispered in my ear, lets go back to my hotel room.

By the time I was twenty three, I was saying I do to her, her beauty a mark in my soul, her kiss, my soul, the only place I wanted to be.

By the time I was 41, I was burying her in the ground, my heart, there in the cemetery, words said, I could not repeat without crying, sadly broken, my soul broken, buried, she was my everything. She was my beautiful wifey, my dream. I have found another but I cannot give that same devotion without feeling like I'm cheating on my wife.

I think of marrying my new dream but then the voices in my head tell me it's wrong, I know they are false, my departed love would want me to be happy but here I am, crying, sad, it is that time of year again, when I feel her touch and know I cannot give it back to a ghost.