The Last Text I Received (or, the Unfinished Symphony of Words)

(A Poem in Fragments, in Whispers, in Echoes, in Screens That Glow at 2 AM.)

---

You.
You sent a message.
I received it. (Or did I?)
It arrived, but did not land.
Landed, but did not settle.
Settled, but did not stay.
A text—a ghost of intent—
arriving wrapped in pixels,
delivered by unseen satellites,
a whisper across the void.

I read it. (I think.)
My eyes scanned its shape, its weight, its breath.
Three words.
Or two.
Or just one.
Maybe none at all.
Maybe just an empty notification,
a black hole of meaning.

"Ok."
"Sure."
"See you."
"Fine."
"I guess."

You.
You could have said more.
But you didn’t.
Or you did, and I missed it.
Maybe you whispered in invisible ink,
and my screen—
blinking, waiting, listening—
could not translate the silence between your syllables.

Did you mean "okay" as in acceptance?
Or "okay" as in surrender?
Was it an exhale? A dismissal?
A bridge or a barricade?
Did you type more and delete it,
leaving only this… artifact?
I imagine the ghosts of unsent words
hovering above your phone,
lingering in the charged air of hesitation.

I think about you.

You.
Fingers hovering over glass,
words forming, unforming.
A sentence was born and buried in the same breath.
Your phone, a pulsing heartbeat in your palm,
your thumb tracing a silent Morse code
over the letters you’ll never send.

You, standing in the dim glow of a streetlight,
or curled up in the blue light of your room,
or waiting at a train station where announcements
blur into the hum of your thoughts.
Did you look at my name and sigh?
Did you hesitate,
knowing that one word too many
or one word too few
could tip the fragile balance we pretend not to see?

And then… sent.
A text, a spark, a stone thrown into water.

I.
I hold my phone like it holds the answers
to questions I’m too afraid to ask.
I see your name.
A familiar stranger,
a constellation I once traced with my fingers,
now distant, now dim.

I want to reply.
I don’t.
Or I do, and delete it.
Or I do, and you don’t reply.
Or you do, and it’s another half-sentence,
another breadcrumb leading nowhere.

My screen is a mirror,
a silent witness to my hesitation.
I type:
"Is everything okay?"
No. Too much.
I type:
"Got it."
No. Too little.
I type:
"K."
Too indifferent.
I type:
"…"
And then I stop.

I let the weight of your words—
your lack of words—
settle into my ribs.
I let them press against my lungs,
a presence, an absence,
a story unfinished.

They.
They say text messages are easy.
Convenient.
Instant.
They say it’s just words,
just letters strung together,
just data moving through invisible wires.

But they don’t know
how a single message
can unravel a night,
can rewind a memory,
can curl itself around the throat of a conversation
until there is nothing left but silence.

They don’t know how many messages
are drafted but never sent.
How many are read and reread,
searching for meaning where none was given.

They don’t know how a "seen" without a reply
feels like a door left ajar.
They don’t know how a "typing…" that disappears
feels like a heartbeat that stops.
They don’t know how


You.
You sent a message.
I received it.

I stare at my screen,
at the tiny letters pressed into digital ether,
at the weightless weight of them.
And for a moment—
just a moment—
I feel the echo of your hesitation.

I type.
I delete.
I type.
I send.

"Okay."

And somewhere,
miles away,
another phone buzzes,
another set of eyes scans a screen,
another person wonders
what I really meant.

And the cycle continues.

#Poetry #DigitalEchoes #TextMessages #UnsentWords #Hesitation #ModernLove #SilentConversations #EmotionalResonance #FragmentsOfUs