I stood on the porch, mostly drunk.
The night was warm, but a good warm.
I watched the lake and cars on the bridge miles away.

I took another pull from the bottle.

I stumbled into my room and rummaged through a basket and found your letters and pictures and lipstick-stained windshield wiper notes.

I held them. I read them and put them in my pocket.

I stumbled through my kitchen and pulled three strike-anywhere lucifers from the box beside my spices and lurched into the yard. Carefully, I put these records of what we had in chronological order and burned the stack from the edges inward.

I pulled from the bottle again and looked at the sky, half-expecting to see God watching. But God wasn't watching anybody.

I watched the words and xeroxed photos turn in and fall apart and I thought for a moment that in that moment, I could slide my Smith from it's holster and bounce one through my skull and nobody would know until I didn't show up for work and didn't call my mom the next night.

Very small, I felt very small in the universe, standing in the wet grass and thinking nothing and breathing rich and warm air.

But it was a passing thought.

Your words were just embers now, and I pulled once more from the bottle and then pulled out my member and pissed on the ashes. And I always called you Ash and I thought that was funny.

I fell back into the house and only the lamp was still on so I turned it off and crawled into bed.

And I wish you'd called.