The ashes, the del­i­cate flames that light her like dry parch­ment. A seething, a burn­ing: the most com­plete sen­sa­tion of decent. Life with­ers and fades and dark­ness takes light.

There, she sits alone as heat engulfs and drowns out a vying bal­ance of sur­vival and suffering.

Noth­ing… noth­ing… It’s lost – no escape remains. The final­ity of con­scious­ness, the imbued posi­tion of her life force drifts quaintly and sac­ri­ficed; another part lost, another part of her empty.

The world turns red, and yel­low, and morphs beyond famil­iar­ity. A breath escapes and a sharp burn­ing turns to sooth­ing noth­ing­ness. She dies… she remem­bers loves, and loses – she dances and smiles.

And then she is gone from us…

…but she is not gone forever.

A place else­where, a force touched by her soul per­suades itself to con­tinue on. She lives – in another way, a bet­ter way. She is happy there. She will smile for time eter­nal, or return to say hello at inter­mit­tent bursts of crossing.

The soul endures and she is alone no more. She is loved. She is warm and wrapped like sum­mer unques­tion­ably per­son­i­fied in a shell with no bound­aries. We are one in a dif­fer­ent way. We share a world includ­ing all and exclud­ing none.

This is our fate. This is our wish. This is my love with, and with­out her by my side.