Message sent

The staccato rhythm of the text message. Seasonless haiku. Is this too much? The pinnacle of nerves as you press send and then the feeling of relief as you know it’s too late! It’s gone! Too late now. Come whatever may. And no smile, no tone, just little words and you guessing at the feelings behind them. Sneaking a re-read. Once, twice, and later again. And now you’ve started will your fingers sneak further contact, will you get drunk and drop yodefensesces and send another? No you probably wont, but history suggests that I may well.

I will save your messages like little jewels in my phone – part of my montage of affectionate moments – and I will keep them until you replace them with something more intimate, something that reveals an escalation in our relationship. Assuming that they compete well with the other messages and people represented there.

They rise to the top like cream, vying with one another for the limited memory and storage space of my phone - which ones together tell the most radiant tale of a life well lived, a person loved? Of course the jewels may fade and be revealed as cheap ironic costume jewellery, me having misread their value, they may become reminders of the more intimate messages that never came, I may delete them with a self-conscious off handedness. If you really annoy me I may delete your name and number. Delete you. And feel the grimmest of satisfaction in doing so - righteous even. How dare someone not like me?? What right do you have to not play out the role I have imagined for you in my life?? Delete.