She loved her the way anxious hearts do, quietly, intensely, with a trembling devotion that felt like holding a lit match too close to her skin. Everyday she woke with a small fear blooming in her chest, a whisper that asked whether she was still wanted, still chosen, still loved.
So she asked her. Not because she doubted her, but because she doubted herself.
"Do you still love me?" The question was a fragile thing, a bird with thin bones, fluttering against her ribs.
At first she answered gently. She cupped her face like it was something delicate and said yes in a voice warm enough to melt her worry. Her reassurance was sunlight, and she basked in it, hungry for warmth she never had learned to give herself.
But reassurance is a strange hunger, the more you feed it, the more it grows.
She asked again. And again. And again.
Each time, her voice carried a tremor, as if she feared the world might collapse if she didn't hear her say the words. She didn't know how to stop. Her heart was a door that never fully closed, always letting in drafts of doubt.
She began to sigh before answering. Small sighs at first, barely noticeable. Then longer ones, heavy ones, the kind that sagged her shoulders.
One evening, the sky outside their window was bruised purple, and she felt the familiar ache rising in her throat. She tried to swallow it, but it climbed anyway, stubborn and scared.
"Do you still love me?" she whispered.
She didn't answer right away. She stared at the floor, at the shadows pooling around her feet, as if searching for patience she had already spent.When she finally spoke, her voice was tired. Not angry, just worn thin.
"I can't keep doing this," she said.
"I can't keep proving something that shouldn't need proof."
Her breath caught. The room tilted, She felt her heart drop like a stone into cold water.
"I'm sorry," she said quickly, desperately.
"I just... I get scared."
"But your fear is becoming my burden. And I'm drowning in it."
She reached for her, but she stepped back, a small movement, but it felt like the earth shifting beneath her feet.
"I can't be the answer to your insecurity," she said.
"I can't be the constant reminder that you're enough. You have to find that somewhere in yourself. And I don't think I can stay long enough for you to learn how."
The words sliced through her, clean and devastating. She felt something inside her collapse quiet breaking, like the sound of a wilted flower finally giving in to gravity.
She grabbed her coat. Didn't slam the door. Didn't shout. Just left with a silence so sharp it felt like glass.
She stood there, alone, the echo of his absence filled the room like smoke. Her hand trembled. Her throat tightened. Her heart beat painfully, as if trying to escape her chest.
She sank to the floor, knees pulled to her chest, and cried the kind of tears that don't make noise, the kind that fall heavy and slow, as if each one carries a memory.
She whispered the question one last time, to the empty air, to the ghost of her still lingering in the room.
Only silence answered. And silence, she learned, is the cruelest truth.
