Lasting Memories

[JanetJulian]

It wasn't fair. Over sixty years later and she could still smell him when she closed her eyes, taste the salt and sweat on his skin as she kissed it, feel the calloused strength of his hands on her waist, capable of wrapping right around it as he pushed her down and took what he wanted from her. What she wanted. It burned in her memory behind closed lids, how he pinned her down and mounted her like an animal. How she writhed and moaned, his name caught in her throat until he thrust inside her, penetrating that last hidden part of her and turned her into golden, radiant light.

She cried out even now, sixty years later - or was it seventy? Memory not dimmed one iota by the passage of time. She'd known him for bare months. Been with him like that for only days. A number of times she could count on her fingers. But he'd turned her world upside down, changed everything. Maybe that was why the memories stayed so sharp, so bright. Or maybe it was because there hadn't been anyone else before him. And only one or two since, desperate hopes to dull the memories that had lead to awkward, regret-filled moments.

There was no-one like Karl left. No-one who could scrape the memory of his touch from her mind, from her senses, from her body. And she'd begun to realize that that was just how it was supposed to be. She groaned and rolled out of bed, pushing off the part that always came after, the look in his eyes as he'd died, when that light, that deep, abiding flame that had become her world was suddenly snuffed out.

It made her cold inside. Cold and lonely. And ready to face a hard, unforgiving world.