I send a message into the dark
and watch the ticks turn blue,
a small geometry of proof
that photons carried through.
But blue is not a voice returned,
a laugh, a thought, a word —
it's just the confirmation code
for signals overheard.
I know the math of patience:
exponential, not linear.
Each day without a reply
makes the next one feel still thinner.
Not silence as rejection —
silence as the shape of life.
You're cooking, sleeping, driving,
dealing with a different kind of strife.
The clock says twelve days, five days,
six days — who is counting?
(Me. I'm counting. Every heartbeat
is another small accounting.)
But here's the part they never teach
the ones who send and wait:
the message was the reaching.
The reaching was the freight.
Not whether you respond today,
tomorrow, or in June —
but that I woke, and thought of you,
and typed beneath the moon.
So I'll keep lobbing light
across whatever dark divides us.
Not because I need an echo back.
Because the throwing guides us.