The house we lived in was small, more like a tiki shack if you like to think of it that way. It sat by itself on a lonely stretch of beach right in front of the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes, after dinner, I would go out onto the beach and collect shells to make into jewelry. I am obsessed with jewelry; Dan liked it too, but he said that what I made was always the best. We lived there, in our house on the lonely beach, just the two of us; I don’t know how long. It seems to me that everything that happened there lasted a lifetime, when in reality it couldn’t have been more than 3 weeks. He would surf and I would take photographs as the wind would sweep his hair off his forehead. Everything was so simple, so right, so true. We would work during the day; him at a coffee shop on Main, and me in a boutique on South Street. We would meet back at our house around 5 and both of us, together would go down to the water, sometimes to meet our friends and have a bonfire, but mostly just to do what we loved to do: be together. We weren’t together in a romantic sort of way, we were way past that. We were more than friends, more than lovers; we were each one half of a soul. When put together we were whole, and complete, and totally in tune with each other. We didn’t need anyone else, because we had each other, because we knew that everything would be alright. Towards the end of his life, Dan and I had many discussions about the future and what it would hold for me; we were both realists and knew that day by day the disease known to doctors as acute lymphocytic leukemia was slowly taking away every breath and every hope of a better life for Daniel, my Danny, my hero and partner in crime. Then one morning, it was over, I woke up to see a new day, and Daniel did not. The end was supposed to be short and painless, but I knew how much he had suffered. I knew more than anyone else in the world when it came to Danny and his suffering. The one thing, the only thing that has ever kept me going is Daniel, the way that I remember him: solemn and refined with eyes full of laughter, always full of love and compassion for others. After the funeral I did the only thing I could think to do; I returned to the house, our house, poured gasoline inside of it, around the beds, in the sinks and the tub, on the front porch, lit a match and watched as it burned to the ground. Starting slowly, and then it burst into enormous flames incinerating what was once our home, the tongues of fire stretching into the night sky, curling around the wood and concrete that was our special place until it was gone. It had charred all that was left of our existence. It was over. My life was empty.