He Did

He stopped loving her today, and not for any particular reason. She turned to him in the morning, same as always, and it had just vanished. That thing that would sit in his throat and warm him on cold nights had vacated, leaving him in the dark while the sun was shining. He stopped loving her, but her hair was still the same. Her eyes still shone just as brightly, her smile radiant as ever.

She hadn’t changed, not in the slightest, and he still found her beautiful, but he did not love her anymore. His heart did not flutter, his hands did not ache for her, and he wondered if anything in this world was ever permanent. He was not a man in need of experience, and had hoped to settle down young so that he never had to look for love again.

He was not interested in new shiny things, and tried his best to remain in love as long as possible. But it was gone. He knew it too, even as he wrote the words and spoke them to her, hoping he could will it back but he could not, he stopped loving her today.

His heart took no pity on him, or on her, and he tried to look at her as she put eggs in the pan and walked around the kitchen, still drunk on the promises they made to each other, the things they planned to do in the future. She talked about a trip to Paris over breakfast, maybe sometime next year. She didn’t know he had stopped loving her today.

 

Confused