Raja Zhafir

Late replies do not bother me. Most of life is not urgent. Text me when the kettle has cooled and the day stops shouting your name. I have learned the shape of waiting that is not personal. The phone sleeps face down. The little dots come and go like fish. I load the dishwasher. I fold a shirt that will wrinkle again in ten minutes. The world does not burn because a bubble did not pop on my screen. Take your time if we are not in love and you do not owe me money. Walk your dog. Miss your stop and laugh. Close your laptop and remember your own temperature. Answer me tomorrow or next week, with crumbs on your sleeve and a screenshot that makes sense of nothing. We are people with spines and errands. I am not a court. You are not on trial. There are two places where silence grows teeth. Love. And debt. If we are in love, delay is a weather report. I listen for thunder in the gap. My chest reads your absence like a map with a torn corner. Text me when you can, and if you cannot, let me know you are alive. A single word will do. Here. Breathing. Later. Lovers live inside each other’s nervous systems. Small pauses are not small there. The body counts. If you owe me money, time is respect with numbers on it. You do not have to write a poem. You do not have to explain your childhood. Tell me a date. Tell me an amount. Keep it. Or ask for a plan that will not bruise you. Ghosting is expensive. It charges interest in distrust. Pay with words first if you cannot pay with cash. For everyone else, I vote for mercy. I answer when I can and I forgive when you cannot. At 09:14 I am in a queue with a loaf that still remembers the oven. At 12:31 I am in the sun outside a pharmacy, counting my breaths to eight so the day will let me back in slowly. At 23:06 I am a person with a book and a lamp and a face that does not belong to a screen. Your blue bubble can wait. Mine can too. Late replies are proof that a life is being lived off camera. A seat on a bus. A spill wiped with the good towel by mistake. A kid calling from the other room. A pan that needs two more minutes. It is not neglect, it is oxygen. We are not notifications. We are weather that changes without asking for applause. When I finally reply, I want to bring a real minute back with me. Not an apology written to impress. A plain sentence that carries heat from a stove or wind from a street. Sorry, I was making soup. Sorry, I was not sorry to be away. Here I am now. What did I miss. Where does it hurt. Where do we begin again. If we are not braided by love, if we are not tied by debt, take your time. Take it fully. Give it back clean. I will meet you where the day lets us both breathe.