We stood together on my dimly lit front porch in the biting October night. He looked at me. It was easy to see that he was trying to hold back tears. As for me, I stopped trying and hot, uncontrollable tears slowly trickled down my face and into my mouth leaving me with a salty and bitter taste of pure emotion. It was so cold outside my tears began to feel like drops of boiling water. It was hard to look at him; making eye contact with each other seemed to be an impossible act. There was so much I wanted to say but couldn’t due to the giant lump that had formed in my throat that was slowly suffocating me. We stood there for about five minutes in dead silence, the entire time I just stared at the ground not wanting to see the pain we were both trying to hide. He dropped my hand and I gasped as though someone had knocked the wind out of me. I gave a pleading look to him, a last cry for help, but he just shook his head and walked off the porch into the cold night; it seemed almost as if the darkness had swallowed him. I watched him as he walked out of my life for good and sank down to my knees underneath the pathetic light of the porch and sobbed till there were no tears left. Just like that I had let him slip out of my fingers and he was gone. I knew that he wasn’t coming back. My head was swimming with awful thoughts. You’re not good enough, you knew this would happen and the last thought that put the dagger even further into my already shattered heart, you have to raise this child alone.