Micro-withdrawal

Distance sometimes arrives as a hundred small exits

You are halfway through a sentence when their eyes drop to a screen. Something vulnerable gets a half-answer. You sit beside each other, but their attention is somewhere else.

Any single moment can be ordinary. Repeated often enough, the person reaching may begin to reach less. The distracted partner may not realise what has changed until the room feels colder.

It looks too ordinary to challenge

It can feel too small to mention without sounding dramatic. Yet the body still learns from repetition: this is not a good time to reach. The point is not to prosecute every glance; it is to notice when absence has become the usual response to contact.