Erosion

I noticed.

That’s the cruel little talent no one warns you about. The ability to watch love leave in increments, so microscopic that nobody else believes it’s happening.

It didn’t leave with a slammed door or a final speech or some thunderous confession. No. It packed itself into small suitcases and walked out quietly, carrying ordinary excuses in its hands.

You stopped texting me.

Not suddenly—not enough to call it abandonment, not enough to accuse. Just enough to make me feel ridiculous for waiting.

Your replies became seasons.

I’d send you entire afternoons folded into messages and receive back single syllables dressed as conversation. You used to arrive in paragraphs. Then sentences. Then fragments. Then reactions. Then silence.

And silence, I learned, is a language too.

I noticed when texting me started to feel like washing dishes to you.

I could see it in the way your words dragged themselves across the screen. In the way your messages arrived with the energy of someone clocking into a shift they hated. Every reply looked rinsed, wrung dry, and hung somewhere far away from affection.

You still answered.

Which was almost worse.

Because unanswered messages are funerals.

But delayed replies with polite punctuation are hospice.

I noticed when our conversations began starving.

They used to run barefoot through midnight and forget time existed. They used to branch into absurd places and bloom into laughter. We used to speak like people discovering hidden rooms inside each other.

Then somehow every conversation became a hallway.

Short.

Echoing.

Nothing on the walls.

Every “how was your day?” became a receipt. Every “You need to hear this!” became an inconvenience.

And I stood there trying to decorate emptiness with enthusiasm.

I noticed when you stopped calling.

At first I told myself you were busy.

People are busy.

People get tired.

People forget.

People survive.

I became your defense attorney before anyone accused you. I built explanations for you out of scraps.

Maybe life is exhausting.

Maybe life is heavy.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe next week.

Maybe after this.

Maybe after everything.

Maybe after me.

But eventually excuses became so numerous they looked suspiciously like evidence.

You stopped calling because you no longer reached for me.

That realization did not arrive dramatically. It arrived the way winter does.

Quietly.

Then all at once.

I noticed when caring became optional.

You used to ask if I had eaten, if I slept, if I got home safely.

Then one day I realized if I disappeared for twenty-four hours, the world would still rotate in your hands exactly the same.

Not because you hated me.

That would have hurt less.

Hatred is still attention.

I was becoming something more humiliating.

Forgettable.

I noticed the way you never had time.

And what a funny thing time is.

People say they lose it.

But I think people spend it.

And somehow everyone always spends it where their heart lives.

You had time.

Just not for me.

You had hours for strangers.

Minutes for notifications.

Entire evenings for anything that didn’t carry my name.

Meanwhile I became a postponed task.

A tab left open.

A notification waiting to be cleared.

I started shrinking myself.

Shorter texts.

Less emotion.

Fewer questions.

I tried becoming convenient.

I folded myself into smaller and smaller versions hoping I would fit inside your day.

But all I learned is this:

No matter how small a person becomes, they still take up too much space where they are not wanted.

I noticed I became your last option.

And God.

That one…

That one did not stab. It dissolved, like being left in saltwater. You came to me after everyone else left. After plans fell apart. After boredom arrived. After your real conversations ended.

I became the waiting room of your loneliness. Never the destination. Only the place you sat until life resumed.

And the humiliating part—

I still smiled when you came.

Like a dog opening the door for someone who forgot they owned it.

Do you know what irritation becomes when left alone long enough?

Grief.

Do you know what grief becomes when it cannot scream?

Shame.

I became ashamed of missing someone who clearly didn’t even miss me.

Ashamed of rereading messages.

Ashamed of noticing.

Ashamed of counting.

Ashamed of hoping.

I hated myself for becoming a mathematician of affection.

Three hours to reply.

One missed call.

Five dry messages.

Seven conversations initiated by me.

As if collecting statistics could prove I had once been loved.

As if data could resurrect a heartbeat.

And the worst part is—

I never even blamed you completely.

Because somewhere in my foolish little theater of self-destruction, I kept wondering:

Maybe this is what happens when someone knows me long enough.

Maybe I expire.

Maybe I arrive interesting and slowly become exhausting.

Maybe people discover there is less to me than they expected.

Maybe I’m a book whose first chapters lied.

Maybe I’m all introduction and no story.

Maybe your silence was not cruelty.

Maybe it was disappointment.

Maybe I simply failed at being someone worth staying for.

So I stayed quiet.

Because I thought if I pointed it out, you’d leave faster and I’d rather be slowly abandoned than officially dismissed.

“Pathetic, isn’t it?”

To pray for crumbs because you remember the taste of feasts.

Still—

I noticed.

I noticed every unread feeling.

Every vanished effort.

Every conversation dying with my message.

Every excuse.

Every absence.

Every little funeral.

I noticed all of it.

I just cared you, missed you, respected you enough to pretend I didn’t.

And now I think that was my final mistake.

Not loving you.

But loving you silently while disappearing.

So if this is where my voice finally reaches you—

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for arriving in your life and mistaking kindness for permanence.

I’m sorry for asking for places in your day that belonged to things you actually loved.

I’m sorry I could not become the person you wanted to answer quickly.

The person you wanted to call.

The person worth making time for.

I’m sorry I kept existing where I was becoming inconvenient.

I’m sorry I stayed long enough to become background noise.

And most of all—

I’m sorry for existing in a way that asked to be chosen.

I should’ve understood sooner that not everyone who opens the door is inviting you to stay.

I noticed.

I always noticed.

I just wished, for once, that you would notice me too.