I Still Have Your Number

I still have your number. I tell people I keep it by accident, that I never got around to deleting it, but that isn't true. I check that it's still there sometimes, the way you check a pocket for keys you already know are gone.

Tonight I typed the whole thing out. Asked how you were. Told you about the small thing that happened today that you'd have laughed at. My thumb was over the arrow before I remembered where the number goes now, which is nowhere, which is into the quiet.

I didn't delete the message. I left it sitting in the box, unsent, the cursor blinking. It felt closer to you than an empty screen would. Then I turned the phone face down on the blanket and lay there listening to nothing, the way you do at 3am when the thing you want to say has no one left to reach.