Ashes of a Golden Anniversary

The smell of smoke and burning memories filled my lungs on our golden anniversary.

Fifty years of what I thought was love, a shared history, was going up in flames around me.

Then, terror: Sarah, my wife, screamed not for me, but for David, my best friend, trapped under a beam.

She shoved me-not away from the danger, but directly into a wall of fire, clearing her path to David.

As the fire consumed me, I saw her scramble past where I' d just stood, without a single backward glance.