You never really think of the human body the same way after you've smelled burning flesh. You can never really touch your own skin without feeling the charred remains of a body that now is only a smoking object. You can never sit on a busy train with strangers in stiff suits and shiny coats without smelling their hot breath and sticky sweat and knowing what’s buried underneath; knowing they are all damaged in some way, all attached and irrevocably drawn to that damage. You can no longer live your life, no longer sit in your own tangible shell once you’ve seen a popping, sizzling, cracking mold of the one you called yours.
It runs in circles around your mind, every painfully palpable moment. You see yourself and you see him. He was everything to you. The sun rose in his eyes and set in his arms and when the yellow streaks of light surged each day, he would hold you tight and whisper that you completed him. And you felt it too; that sense of fullness in his arms, of blissful oblivity that everything was so very right. If only it had lasted.
Maybe it was never meant to, maybe you got a happy ending with a running timer--you just never heard its warning beeps. You loved him too much, needed him too much. You allowed him to swallow your heart and lock your brain, throwing away the key.
But then your house burned down. It was a gas leak or an overheated oven. The source didn’t matter now that he was gone; taking with him your heart and key.
You awoke to a shrill alarm, this was the stopwatch you had not been privy to, and now your happily ever after had come to an end. You were surrounded by a bed alive with golden sparks. White sheets, pillows, and blankets burning to black. You did not know where he was, but you couldn’t move; flabbergastedly frozen as the pillow beside you was slowly swallowed by the orange flames. They chewed the pillow, moving towards you. The fiery touch at your hip sweated danger and broke your icy exterior. You jumped from the bed, stumbling through the house trying to scream, but his name sat still in your throat, pushed down by the smoky interior.
The air around you was so convoluted, it blocked your vision and you tripped over a something stiff and hot. Looking down you saw it was his body.  He was scalding and you had to scramble away from the steaming furnace that had once been your sanctuary.  His eyes were opened wide and baby blue like the ignorant sky painted outside. This had confused you as his eyes were a bark tree brown, not blue, and you did not understand. These were not the eyes you had fallen for, nor was this the embrace you had stayed for. You bent over his corpse and the smoke danced around the both of you, sculpting a space for you and him through the air. You couldn’t touch him, couldn’t call for help. Your limbs felt like the chocolate jello you both ate every night when you first moved here. It had been smooth in your mouth, gliding circles around your tongue, waltzing on your teeth and gums. You looked down at his sooted skin like rubber torn and fidgeting around the bone. Like jello you thought, only maybe a shade darker.
You could faintly hear sirens, but you weren’t sure if it was the smoke playing in your head. You were tired, you decided to rest for just a minute beside him. He was so hot, he felt chilly and you welcomed the cool through your jello limbs; your jello body that wiggled and twitched. And so you closed your eyes dreaming of oceans of chocolate jello, cold and tumultuous with big white spoons floating along its waves. 
You had blinked awake in a room far whiter and brighter than the previous one. The pain is what had hit you first. Your entire body burned, it felt as if a million tiny red ants crawled along your skin. They clawed and scratched, and you yearned to pick them off and rub away the hurt. But touching your skin was worse. Your arms were angry pink slabs of meat and so you screamed and screamed until your vision faded to silver and your throat blew away with the wind.
The pain had faded with time but the memory of him had not. It stayed with you wherever you went. It clung to your calves and hid in your shoulders. But no more. And as you stared down at the ashy sidewalk speckled with black smushed gum and unseeing pedestrians, you finally felt okay. So you let go, spreading your arms out in front of you and petting the light and cool wind. You were flying, you were finally free.