In the end, then, it began with an uneasiness, a tickling in the back of his mind, soon becoming a compelling impulse, a drive to action, and the photograph in his wallet seemed to sing in the same dulcet tones he was accustomed to hearing from her those times she'd take the microphone, slowly, confidently, or just in the car, in a pub, happy with drink and proximity to him.

The picture of her was the same he'd carried long after the fact, at first too pained to remove it, then later, too numb, so there it stayed, dark mocha eyes never looking at him but cast perpetually at something out of frame, one bare shoulder exposing a winged dancer inked into her skin, and now in the stillness of the cooling desert evening this photograph intoned a song only he could hear.

Out here, far west, several hundred leagues away from her, he stood, cigarette lighter in one hand and the photo in the other, waiting for the song to end, the closeness of the past lending itself to memories of her singing to the admiration of others but reserving her megawatt smile for him alone, and how he felt an accomplishment by proxy, with an alcoholic afterhaze that flushed through him each time.

And in the end, the photograph, weighted at the corner with a rock, curled away from the flames that consumed it, and along with it her visage, slowly crackling as the emulsion layer peeled away from the heat, molecular bonds being broken down, a memory held static turned to blackened carbon ash, and when it was over he looked at the sky, and wept.