Trampoline.

A trampoline, that’s all was left. One single, solitary piece of our lives, and that was all that was left. The house, that was nothing but a pile of damp soggy wood and brick, the car, a lump of metal. And she, she was gone, just like everything else. Except that god damned trampoline.

The police and fire service were still here, the ambulance was gone, taken her to the hospital. I wouldn’t go with them, I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to see her, not now. Because she was gone, she couldn’t be gone. I needed her.

A police man comes over, he tells me they want to talk. I just walk away from him, I don’t. He doesn’t press it though. He just leaves me to walk. I go to the back of the house, what would have been the back of the house. To that trampoline. Where everything started.

“Come jump with me.” she called.

“No, I’m good here.”

It was bright, and there was a breeze. I was sitting on the back porch of my moms house, and she was jumping up and down on the trampoline that had been sitting in the back garden for as long as either of us could remember.

“Please, c’mon I have something for you.” she calls mid jump.

“I cant, I just cant.” I say back staring at the ground.

She looked amazing as ever. With her big brown eyes and dull red hair that had been dyed more times than I bothered to remember. She wore a fake lip ring, like the one I wanted when I was old enough.

“Aww, pleaseeeee.” she begged and then laughed.

Her laugh was beautiful, like crystal. The most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

“Fine then.” I grumble, stand up and run to the trampoline. She reaches out and grabs my hand to help me up. It feels like an electric shock goes through me. My heart stops, my stomach flips uncontrollably and I grin like an idiot.

“Whats so important you couldn’t tell me from my place on the porch?” I ask as I sit down next to her. She had stopped jumping.

“This.” she mumbles and leans over to me.

Her lips touch mine and fireworks explode inside my eyes. She keeps them there and I kiss back, our lips moving together, like a single entity. Her tongue passes over my bottom lip. I grin into the kiss and then part my lips giving her entrance to my mouth. She slips her tongue into my mouth and moves it everywhere.

Eventually we pull apart, need of life bringing oxygen too great to continue.

In a single breath I say, “I love you.”…

That was the beginning, and now it was gone. Everything was gone and nobody seemed to understand that. Not the police or the fire fighters, not the neighbors or the paramedics. They just did their job’s. But it was too late, by the time they were here, she was already gone. Now all I had was memories, and that stupid trampoline.

I sit, on the remainder of that porch, that porch that brought back so many memories. Good and bad. Most of them with her. I sat there for hours. Just thinking, about what I would do now, where I would go. Mostly of her, and how much I needed her. It was getting bright when I felt someone put a jacket around my shoulders and sit down next to me. They said nothing and made no attempt to rouse me from my thoughts. They understood. Only them.

Eventually, well after dawn someone came over and told me they needed to speak to me. The officer from before. He wanted to know what had happened. Like I knew, one minute I was asleep, the next I was choking on smoke and trying to get outside. I’d brought her too, but even then it was too late. She was already gone. The smoke had gotton to her. And now she was never coming back.

They took me to the hospital, to get checked out. I didn’t want to go. She would be there, somewhere. I couldn’t go, no. I couldn’t go to the place where she, my wife, my love, my everything was. Because then I would have to admit she was gone. They took me anyway.

The next hours passed in a blur of poking, prodding tests and doctors telling me how lucky I was to be alive. Two lives taken instead of one. How was that fair?

She was gone, and so was our baby. We hadnt known very long. We’d hardly even found out. We were still in shock thay she was going to be a mommy, and so was I. We were going to have our own baby. Why were they taken? Why not me? I asked the doctors that. They didn’t have an answer.

People visited, my parents and siblings. They didn’t say much. Neither did I. I just sat in the hospital bed. Trying to figure out why I hadnt been the one to succumb to the smoke instead of them. Why I had lived, when they had died. Why I hadnt just gone back inside once I realized it was too late.

But I had no answer.

They let me leave the hospital the day of their funeral. She was dressed in fancy clothes. I wondered where from, all of ours had been destroyed. But she looked beautiful. Pale as a ghost, but as beautiful as an angel. With her beautiful dull red hair.

That’s when the tears came, up until there I hadnt cried, hadnt showed any emotion. But seeing them was too much. So I broke down, in front of our friends, and family. She was gone, and so was our baby.

The funeral was short, the burial even shorter. People shook my hand and told me they were “sorry for my loss”. That they were here if I needed someone. Well I did, but it wasn’t them. I needed her. But she was gone and never coming back.

I went back to the house, when my parents had their eyes off of my long enough for me to slip away. It was still just a pile of charred wood and stone. With our things strewn throughout. The trampoline. That’s where I was going. I walked around the back, and took off my uncomfortable jacket and shoes. Then climbing up onto the trampoline I sat down.

I sat for a while, then it started to rain. We’d always loved the rain. To feel the drops hitting your skin, to hear the rain. Just rain. We loved the rain. I stood up and started to jump, up and down. Feeling the rain splash against my skin. I felt like I was fifteen again. Like the day everything had started. I felt like she was there.

She was gone. But I still had the memories. And this goddamned trampoline….