Ma Cherie

As the years wore on I grew considerably weaker. I had grown tired, the slightest excursion and I was out of breath. Every now and then sharp pains in my heart would have me agony. "That damn witch" I cursed, it was because of her I was a shadow, a shadow of the man I once was, it was at that moment it hit me, the brutal realization that time was running out. If I was lucky I had a year, a single tear fell from eye. I spent my whole life on a quest for love, I had loved, loved with such intensity, but- I had never once been loved back. Women, girls, whores, I had loved them all, yet all they had ever done was use me. I pondered what to do, I knew I would never find a women to love me, for I was dying, I was loner, I was addicted to whiskey, and years of pain had made me a bitter man. The question was where did I want to die? Paris?, no, to many lost loves, Nice?, possibly, Bezier?, yes Bezier, I only had happy memories of Bezier, the town where I grew up, my first girlfriend, we used to listen to old jazz records and dance, she danced so beautifully, it's been some forty years but I can still remember, the image will be forever engraved in my mind, a red cotton dress, her blossoming breasts struggling with the confinement, her bare feet and her hips and arms moving to the soothing sounds of jazz. I fell head over heels for ma chérie, but our love was cut short after eight months when she died of typhoid. I was devastated, I had lost the one person who understood me, she never judged me for descision not to make friends, she never cursed the day I was born like my father did, I loved her and I wasn't me without her. I never got over her death. She was the love of my life