The best way to burn a photo is to start from the center.
When lit from the edge, the flame burns itself out before it reaches her face, her eyes that shimmer at me on the other side of the camera. It cuts parts away but stops short of catharsis. I muster the courage to dip her back into the candle flame. The paper crumbles from my hand into tentative ash.
I burn the next one from the center. It pops and distorts, beyond salvage long before it crumbles to ash. I light the rest off of that photo, one on top of the other like a palm-sized bonfire, my only source of light and heat.
I get to the birthday card she drew for me, and then I say I can't do it. Surely, I have to keep this, surely, but the writing on the back makes my organs contort as much as the thought of burning it. I hold its edge up to the candle, memorizing her words as the fire consumes. It hurts. The flames reach my fingers before I let go.
I cannot have this back. I will never get this back. Even if, somewhere, some impression of it remains, the thing that mattered is gone.
Tentatively, I admit: I am free of it.