The Message Box at 10:42

10:42. Phone at 38 percent, which is fine, which is enough, I keep telling myself that like the battery is the thing deciding anything here. The cursor is doing its blink in the empty box. On, off, on. It does not care how long I sit here. I have had this stranger chat open for what feels like a while now and the other side is just a name and a little gray line that says they were here recently, recently enough that they might still be looking.

I type hi.

I look at hi for a second. It is so small. It sits in the box like it is embarrassed to be there. Three letters and then nothing, no plan after it, no second thing to say once they say hi back, and I can already see the whole conversation dying right there in two breaths. I hit Backspace three times and watch it go away one letter at a time, i, h, gone.

10:43. I try what are you doing. This feels more like a real sentence at least, it has a verb, it points at them. But then I read it again and it sounds like I am checking up on them, like I am their mother standing in a doorway. What are you doing. Nothing, I am sitting on a bed too, that is what we are both doing, we are both on Knot.chat at almost eleven on a night that did not have anything in it. I do not need to ask. Backspace, the long press this time, the whole line clearing in one swallow.

I think about being funny. There is a version of me that opens with a dumb joke and the joke disarms everybody and we are off. I type why did the. I do not even have the joke. I have the shape of a joke and no joke inside it. I have why did the and a cursor blinking after it waiting for me to be the kind of person who finishes that, and I am not, not at 10:44, not cold like this with a stranger who has not given me anything to bounce off yet. Backspace. why did the becomes why did becomes why becomes the clean empty box again.

The box is very patient. That is the worst part. It never fills itself in. It just holds the blink and waits and the longer I wait the more it feels like the next thing has to be good, has to earn all this time I have already spent, which is a stupid way to think because they cannot see me sitting here. They cannot see the four messages I already wrote and killed. As far as they know I do not exist yet. There is no record. The deleting does not cost anything except to me.

10:46 now. I drift the other direction and type do you ever feel like nights like this are just. And I stop because oh no. That is a heavy one. That is the kind of line you say to someone at 3am who you have known for a while, not the first thing you put in front of a person whose name you read four minutes ago. It is too much. It opens a door that is way too big for a hallway we have not even walked into. They will read it and think I am sad, or worse, that I am performing being sad so they will ask me about it. I am a little sad, sure, it is that kind of hour, but I do not want it to be the opener. I do not want the first thing to be the deepest thing. Backspace, backspace, the whole confession unspooling backwards until it is nothing.

I put the phone face down for a second. Then I pick it back up because of course I do.

The gray line under their name updated. They are typing. The little dots are there, the three of them doing their wave, and my stomach does a small dumb thing, they are typing, they are going to go first, thank god, all of this was for nothing and they are just going to start us. I wait. I watch the dots. I am ready to be a person who responds instead of a person who begins.

The dots stop.

They just stop. No message comes. The dots are there and then they are not and the box is empty on their side too and now I understand that they were doing the exact thing I was doing, typing something and looking at it and deciding it was wrong and taking it away. Both of us. Two people on two beds erasing hello at each other. That should make me feel less alone and instead it makes the whole thing feel even more breakable, like we are both holding a glass and waiting for the other one to put it down first.

So okay. Fine. 10:49. 35 percent now, the night is leaking out of the battery while I do nothing.

I type hey, I saw you were up too. I read it. It is plain. It is almost nothing. But it is true, it is the actual reason I am here, they are up and I am up and that is the only fact I have that belongs to both of us. It does not ask them for anything big. It does not need them to be clever back. It just says I noticed you and leaves a little room on the end, room shaped like maybe you answer and maybe you do not and either way I will be okay, which is a lie but a small one.

I reread it one more time. I change too at the end to as well, then I change it back, because too sounds like a person talking and as well sounds like a person trying. hey, I saw you were up too.

I leave the comma. I do not add anything after it to make it bigger. I let it just sit there being a small true thing, and I leave the rest of the line empty on purpose, that empty part is for them, that is the part where they get to not answer if they do not want to, and I want them to be able to feel that the room is open, that I have not nailed anything to the floor.

10:51. Cursor still blinking, but after the words now, not in front of them.

I send it before I can take it back.