SAILING INTO BETRAYAL

SAILING INTO BETRAYAL(Bernie Martin) We were in a remote bay somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Forty years of what I thought had been love and devotion. I hadn't fancied going ashore, preferred an afternoon nap but life was about to draw back its hand and give me a good slap.
Your tablet pinged so I went over to check it out. Oh how I wanted it to be a mistake but there was no doubt. Other messages from six years ago revealed your betrayal but to be the victim of infidelity was not my desired portrayal.
The sky was dark, the wind had blown up when you came back. "Storm incoming," you said before noticing I'd started to pack. "You know," you said as the rain beat a refrain on the roof. A relationship I had thought was forever wasn't in fact rustproof.
I checked into a hotel, swam lengths, talked to no one, leaving you on the boat thinking about what couldn't be undone. I pondered expressions that I knew didn't describe us so where we went from here was something we had to discuss.
Were we marching to a different drummer? Were you Hank Marvin to my Joe Strummer?
Could the two of us be said to be night and day? Were we mismatched, unsuited, was I a castaway?
No. So I rejoined you and we completed the trip, talked as never before, found we still wanted our partnership. But it would remain a festering wound, one that had left a scar. Was it a trait others would notice even from afar?
And yet, in a bookshop, if we went our own way, we'd appear with the same choice, maybe Hemingway.
As we made our way home across the seas I realised that you were not the chalk to my cheese.