Setting Fire to It - Anne Wright

He set the fire to watch the flames, to smell the smoke and to feel the heat. He was cold inside and out. He built the pyramid of sticks and branches, about a foot high, with crumpled up paper inside, like a miniature funeral pyre, only this time he planned to burn something that was alive. He had written her name on an index card and folded it into multiple triangles around a piece of her chewing gum he found on the sole of his shoe. How appropriate. He lifted the bottle of Jack Daniels to his lips. It burned, too. His sole. Her soul. He set fire with to it with a match from their favorite restaurant, the one overlooking the harbor where they had met one rainy winter night. He fell in love with her, wondering if this was what it was like, love at first sight. The flames licked the folded card and bubbled the gum, hot and crackling with a life of its own. It went up in wisps of curling grey smoke. Lucky the wind was quiet because he wanted the little cinders to float up as he incinerated his love for her. The orange and black cinders fell to the earth, life gone out.