Rivener
n.
a chilling hint of distance that creeps slowly into a relationship— beginning to notice them laugh a little less, look away a little more, explain away their mood like it’s no longer your business—as if you’re watching them fall out of love right in front of you, gradually and painfully, like a hole in the radiator that leaves your house a little colder with every passing day, whose only clue is a slow, unnerving drip—drip —drip.
Middle English riven, to rend, to cleave apart. Pronounced “riv-uh-ner.”
