Ashes

He took a cigarette from his coat pocket and tucked it, unlit, between his lips. He was standing in front of me and I noticed his sleeves first and how long they were, covering his wrists and going all the way down to the middle of his hands. Long and impractical.
I thought about touching his wrists, I wanted to feel his heartbeat there with the tips of my fingers.
Ba-booming, ba-boom. ba-boom.
And then in the same breath I worried that when lighting his cigarette he would catch his sleeve, long and impractical as it was, and how quickly the flames would travel up his arms and how all at once he would burst into a ball of molten, orange fire and I could hear him screaming above all the other noise in my head and I could see him flailing and reaching out and trying, really trying; and my heart felt like a fist in my chest and I knew then that we were doomed because I cared too much and he would most probably die some violent death leaving me alone and surrounded by all the ashes. 
Somebody's always leaving.