Will My Ex-Partner Reach Out or Text Me First?

2:11 a.m. I put the phone on the windowsill because I was tired of pretending I was not waiting for it. The screen still lit the room from there. Very rude. The question was whether my ex would text first. The uglier question was whether I could survive not being chosen before morning.

Eight of Wands made me think of all the messages I had wanted to receive: not the dramatic ones, actually. Just a normal, badly punctuated, slightly clumsy opening. Hey. Are you awake? I know it is late. Something ordinary enough to prove I had not imagined the whole connection.

Page of Swords felt like the checking. Not communication, just surveillance with cleaner shoes. I had looked at his status twice, then looked away too quickly, as if the phone could accuse me. My thumb kept making the same little movement. Open, close, open, close.

The question of who texts first is never only about texting. It is about dignity. It is about the childish part of me that wants to be wanted without asking, because asking would make the hunger visible. I hate visible hunger. It has no manners.

Knight of Cups looked romantic for three seconds, then suspicious. A message can arrive dressed like tenderness and still be mostly impulse. I wrote that down and underlined impulse twice. I have mistaken impulse for courage before. Expensive mistake.

At 2:39 I typed, "I hope you're okay." It looked kind. It was not entirely kind. It was a soft doorbell. A polite way of asking, do I still exist in your nervous system? I deleted it and felt both proud and pathetic.

Four of Swords told me nothing was moving tonight. Or maybe I was the one who needed to stop moving. I put the phone under a book called nothing relevant, because even the book deserved privacy from this nonsense.

If he texts first tomorrow, I will still have to decide what kind of conversation I am willing to enter. If he does not, I will still have to make breakfast. This is the part nobody wants in a reading: life continues with or without the notification.

I left the phone on silent. Then I checked whether silent was really on.