reading room
online
I open the chat. it feels like a museum. blue hearts still glow like aquarium lights.
love you. love you more. silly photo. goodnight 💙
I scroll. the air hums. somewhere between message 243 and 244 we start laughing again.
then— that green dot. alive. not for me, but alive.
for a second I forgot how to exist. my pulse syncs with a typing bubble that never appears.
we pass in the corridor sometimes. same planet, different atmosphere.
she's still vegetarian. I'm vegan now. both of us evolving in opposite directions of the same idea.
two years minus a day. 14/10/23. the phone warms my hand like it remembers.
next week I'll be playing bass in Rock of Ages. pretending it's just music.
But when Here I Go Again starts, I still see her— lip-syncing, laughing, like she never stopped.
and I just sit there, scrolling through a life that still types back.
— Lilith