One grey checkmark
    greets every message
    I’ve sent you since this morning.

Sent, not delivered—

      and here I am at Irby’s,
      smiling at the little bastard

      like it brought good news.

For once, it has.

Your phone is probably dead,
     you’re sleeping in so hard
     after partying all night with your besties

     that morning can fend for itself.

I don’t need the second check
     to tell me where I stand.

For pretty much two full days,
    you and I stopped talking around the things
    and spoke into them—

    the misunderstandings,
    the unsaid,

    everything that had stayed beneath the surface.

All of it finally up
    where the light could reach it.

Best two-dayer ever—
    not an official measure of anything,
    but I reckon we know exactly what it holds:

    enough truth to change the weight of quiet.

I used to ask these little marks
  to do more than they were built for:

  one, then two,
  grey, then blue,
  sent, delivered, seen—

  tiny status lights
  trying to tell me
  what was happening in your heart.

Today, the system can stop at one.

It has nothing left to prove.

So sleep, Mari.

Let the phone stay dead,
    let my little messages wait
    in their quiet queue
    while I sit here at Irby’s
    and leave that grey checkmark

    exactly as it is.

They can wait,
     perfectly undelivered.

Everything important already made it through.