there are three small words fluttering around inside my chest, and it's getting harder and harder to not let them out. i bite my lips and think about them in my half-sleep state while he gets ready for work and makes the coffee and leaves me a single cigarette. i've never said them first before; he said them first the last time we were here, and somehow i feel like they have to come from me, and somehow i feel like since they're there i have to let them out, and eventually i won't be able to stop them fluttering up my throat, and tumbling out of my lips, but somehow i'm so scared that once they're out there everything might change.