How do you know you’ve lost someone?

Well, I guess you just know. I mean it starts with them forgetting to text you back, or not saying goodnight. It starts when you feel more alone in their arms than anywhere else in the world. It starts with arguments about stupid things and disagreeing more than you knew possible. It starts with them asking you what movie you want to watch,then choosing something completely different and it ends with them not bothering to ask you anything at all.

It ends when they start kissing you with their eyes open and nodding distractedly at everything you say. It ends when there is nothing left but ash because it’s true: the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. It ends when silence isn’t comfortable any more and the person sat in front of you is a stranger in strange clothes.

You want to know how you know you’ve lost someone? In the end? Just in the same the way you know most things: you just do.

“I hope we last. I hope we do.

But if we don’t, this is how I want you to remember me:

I want you to remember me curled up, listening to the sound of your heartbeat and tracing maps across your skin. Remember me laughing at your jokes, even the stupid ones. Remember me in hysterics for absolutely no reason and in tears because one time you made me so sad neither of us thought I’d recover. Remember me brave, that time you held my hand and I thought I was going to die; remember me scared and gentle and delicate and breakable - only for you though, only for you.

Remember me happy, and all the ridiculous ways I tried to get your attention. Remember the way I was too stubborn to talk to you and how absolutely insane it drove the both of us. Remember all the firsts and how they were so delightful we went back for seconds and thirds and fourths. Remember the songs you couldn’t stop listening to and the childish dreams you allowed yourself about the future. If it’s any consolation I allowed myself to have them too.

If it comes to it I don’t want you to remember the ending.

Remember the beginning. Remember the first time you knew.