They dreamed of how it would be.

The young man
who had spent too many nights
in choking loneliness
pictured endless rounds
of erotic ecstasy, with himself at the
center of every erect fantasy,
a submissive, enthusiastic harem
at his tireless, red-hot command.
The woman who had struggled all her life
to be what other people thought she should be
dreamed of endless, sumptuous banquets,
of never-full days of exotic dishes offered
in endless, gloriously indulgent procession.
The man who had worked himself
into premature old age
only to find himself clinging to the edge
with calloused hands
imagined a jaw-dropping mansion
with a hundred servants at his
beck and call, a life of ease
and fantasy-levels of comfort,
surrounded by every object
the hungry imagination could
conceive of.
And the woman with the sunken eyes
and the body ravaged by the
never-ending outrage in her joints
and bones,
simply wished for some place
where it didn't hurt any more.