Slow Heartbreak

A Poetic Exploration of Slow Heartbreak

“Some heartbreaks don’t roar. They whisper — like wind leaving an open window.”

There’s a kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come crashing down like a storm. It doesn’t break dishes or burn photographs. It doesn’t scream in parking lots or cry in public.

It’s quieter than grief. Softer than tears.

It is the kind of heartbreak where the love leaves gently — so gently, in fact, that you don’t even realize it’s gone until you reach for it, and your hands come back empty.

This is the heartbreak of slow forgetting.

And it’s the cruelest kind.

A Love That Faded Like Smoke

You didn’t leave all at once.

There were no slammed doors or tragic goodbyes. No ultimatums, no climactic betrayals. Just pauses.

At first, you still answered quickly. Your name lit up my phone like a lighthouse. Then slowly — so slowly — your replies became colder. Shorter. You laughed less.

You stopped asking if I ate.

You stopped noticing if I cried.

You were still there, technically. Physically. You were there in the room, across the dinner table, walking beside me. But your spirit — your attention, your tenderness, your inner world — had already begun to drift.

It felt like hugging fog.

I didn’t even know I was losing you.

Not at first.

The Silence That Grows Louder

They never tell you how loud silence can be. How it builds, molecule by molecule, in the space between words.

You used to talk to me with your eyes. Now they glance past me like I’m someone familiar from a dream you can’t remember.

We still said “I love you.”

But it became a habit — a punctuation, not a feeling.

You forgot me slowly. In your tone.

In your lack of questions.

In the way you no longer played “our songs” in the car.

You stopped taking photos of me.

You stopped remembering how I liked my tea.

I wasn’t unloved.

I was slowly unnoticed.

And it hurt in a way that was hard to explain to anyone else.

The Gentle Knife

There’s something haunting about being forgotten softly. It doesn’t make you angry — it makes you hollow. It’s the heartbreak that doesn’t earn sympathy because it’s not dramatic. It’s the kind of grief that sneaks into your bones.

And it’s harder to heal from something you can’t define.

How do you mourn someone who’s still around?

How do you scream when the wound was made by a feather?

Because the truth is — you didn’t break my heart.

You brushed it away.

And sometimes I think that’s worse.

Memory As Ghost

Now that you’re gone — truly gone — I still catch myself remembering you as if nothing changed.

I remember you as someone who loved me. Not someone who slowly stopped.

I remember your hands as warm. Your words as safe.

But memory is a liar, isn’t it?

Because if I dig deeper, I remember the ache, too.

The quiet dinner tables.

The missed calls.

The way I started shrinking myself just to keep you from drifting farther.

You didn’t forget me all at once.

You just stopped holding on.

And I held on for both of us — until my hands bled.

Healing Is Naming It

This is for anyone reading this who feels unloved in the middle of love.

This is for those whose heartbreak never made headlines in their own lives — whose pain wasn’t loud enough for others to notice.

Know this:

Your heartbreak is valid.

Even if it didn’t come with fireworks.

Even if it came in silence.

The way they forgot you doesn’t make you forgettable.

It only means they didn’t know how to hold something so constant, so tender, for long enough.

“You didn’t leave. You drifted. And one day, I realized I was the only one still anchored.”

— Malik Mehtab