Why Did He Suddenly Stop Talking to Me?

He stopped talking so suddenly that my body kept walking into the old rhythm. 11:49 p.m., I looked up from washing rice and expected the phone to light. It did not. The rice water turned cloudy in my hands.

Eight of Wands reversed felt like a hallway where every door had been quietly locked. No explosion. No explanation. Just stopped movement. I hate stopped movement more than endings sometimes. Endings at least have paperwork.

The Moon made me suspicious of everything. Did I say something wrong? Did he meet someone? Did he decide I was too much? My mind opened a little night market of terrible options.

Four of Cups looked like emotional absence. Not hatred. Worse in some ways. A person sitting there with a cup in front of them and still unable to reach. I have been that person too, which made it harder to hate him cleanly.

Two of Swords was the silence between two people both protecting themselves. I wanted to call it cruelty. Maybe some of it was. But some of it looked like fear with good posture.

I wrote the last normal thing he said: "I'll tell you later." Later became a country with no embassy.

At 12:17 I found a hair tie in my jacket pocket from the night we walked home in the rain. I held it for no reason. A hair tie. Ridiculous evidence.

Sudden silence makes me want to become louder. Tonight I tried the opposite. I wrote down every fact and refused to decorate the blank spaces.

The rice was still sitting in the bowl. I had forgotten to cook it.