Before You Delete This Message

The message sat unsent in her phone, glowing faintly in the dark.

“Hey, it’s me. I just wanted to say I’m sorry…”

Her thumb hovered over the send button, trembling. The cursor blinked like a heartbeat. She stared at the screen, thinking of everything she could have said, everything she should have said before it all fell apart.

Maya had always been good at writing words she never sent. Her drafts folder was a cemetery of unsent messages — apologies, confessions, memories, goodbyes. But tonight was different. Tonight, her heart told her to try one last time.

Across town, Ethan’s phone buzzed weakly on his desk. He didn’t check it. His room was silent except for the sound of rain ticking against the window. He had promised himself he wouldn’t look at her messages anymore. Each time he did, the ache came back stronger, reminding him of what he lost — or maybe what he never really had.


---

They had met two years ago in a small bookstore café — she was searching for poetry, and he was trying to write it. Their first conversation was about Rumi. Their second was about loneliness. By the third, they had stopped pretending they were strangers.

Ethan was a writer who believed in words more than people. Maya was the kind of girl who laughed at midnight storms and took pictures of old doors. She saw light in everything. He saw meaning in every shadow. Together, they created a world that only existed in messages — long, poetic, and filled with half-truths and hope.

Until one day, she stopped replying.

No fight, no explanation. Just silence.

He had waited a week, then a month. Then, finally, he deleted her number — or at least, that’s what he told himself.


---

Now, months later, she was typing that message. The guilt had followed her like a shadow. She had left because she was scared — scared of how deeply she had fallen for someone who wrote about heartbreak like it was his first language. She had wanted to be his peace, not another chapter in his book of pain.

But peace, she learned, wasn’t found in running away.

So here she was, writing again:

> “Before you delete this message, I just want you to know — I never stopped caring. I just didn’t know how to stay without breaking you or myself.”



She read it over three times. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. Her heart pounded as she pressed send.

The message whooshed away into the digital void.


---

Ethan was half-asleep when the buzz came again. He glanced at the screen out of habit — and froze.

Maya.

He stared at the name for a long time before opening it. The rain outside grew heavier, almost like the sky was waiting too.

He read her words once, then again. Every line carried the weight of all the unspoken things between them. He didn’t know what to feel — anger, relief, love, or loss. Maybe all of it.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard.
He started to type:

> “I thought you forgot me.”



Then paused. Deleted it.

Typed again:

> “I wanted to hate you, but I couldn’t.”



Deleted that too.

Finally, he wrote:

> “I never deleted you.”



He hit send.


---

When Maya saw his reply, tears slipped down her cheeks. Not because it was a perfect message, but because it was honest — the kind of message people write when they’ve already forgiven you long before you asked.

For the first time in months, she smiled. She felt the strange peace of closure — not the kind that ends a story, but the kind that allows it to begin again.

She typed one last line:

> “Then maybe we both still have something left to write.”



And this time, she pressed send without hesitation.


---

The next morning, sunlight broke through the rain. Ethan checked his phone again, and for the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel empty.

Sometimes, the messages we’re most afraid to send are the ones that save us.

And sometimes, the ones we almost delete — become the start of something new.