What Is My Ex Thinking or Feeling About Me During No Contact?

No contact makes the room too large. 12:43 a.m., I was sitting on the floor beside the laundry basket, asking what he was thinking about me. The socks beside me knew more about my life than he did at that moment.

The Moon felt obvious, but not in a magical way. More like the way my mind fills every blank with a little horror film. He is relieved. He is suffering. He is with someone else. He is reading old messages. He is not thinking at all. I could produce twenty versions before brushing my teeth.

The Hermit annoyed me because silence can look deep even when it is just avoidance wearing a coat. Maybe he is reflecting. Maybe he is hiding. Maybe I am the one hiding inside the idea that he is reflecting.

I wrote down the last thing I knew for sure: we had not spoken in nine days. Nine days is not a prophecy. It is nine days. My brain wanted to make it a weather system, a verdict, an omen. I gave it a number instead.

Two of Swords looked like the way I had been living: one eye covered, one hand still reaching for the phone. I kept saying I needed clarity, but I also avoided the kind of clarity that would leave no room for guessing.

Six of Cups brought memory in quietly. Not the big memories. The small ones. His chipped mug. The song he always skipped. The way he folded napkins badly. No contact does not erase a person. It gives memory a bigger apartment.

The cruel thing is that I can never know exactly what he thinks tonight. I can only know what the silence is doing to me. It is making me narrate both roles in a play nobody asked to attend.

I put the laundry in the machine at 1:18. I forgot detergent and had to open it again. That felt about right.