catharsis.

you know you've lost him when

you feel him slipping away.

slowly. but surely.

you don't feel his warmth anymore, and it leaves you cold. leaves you hollow and shaking and curled up on the couch as you tell yourself not to cry, that you're just imagining things, that everything is going to be okay, that everything will be as it should.

will it?

you don't know.

and that is always what catches you right in the gut.

you have a certain feeling, and when you follow it you realize he's deleted the pictures he has of you. but you're here. you're still here, you're still here, in front of him, living, breathing, a current memory, so why would he do that, why would he do that unless he was planning on leaving all this time in the first place?

you realize he doesn't seem to crave you near him much lately, especially when he used to hold your hand to him so tightly that no one could pry you both apart. his hand no longer finds yours on instinct. he never holds you to him anymore. it's like he was burning for you before, like he couldn't stand to be apart from you, but now all that's left is a deathly, complacent sort of quiet. you wonder how long it will take for the silence to kill you.

you rewind all the times he's told you that you were beautiful, that you were worth it, that he loved you. then you playback the phone call from the other afternoon, where you asked him if he still loved you and all that followed was a significant silence and a quiet 'I'm not so sure anymore', and you start wondering where it went wrong, and was it something you'd done, and was there something you could have done.

your chest starts to ache, dull and heavy within your ribs. you know this pain well. you remember it, remember the way it winds itself around your heart.

you just never thought that he'd ever be the cause of it.