Left On Read Again
Matched with your picture on a Tuesday
half drunk on lack of sleep
Your bio said you loved bad movies and digging way too deep
We traded jokes for three whole days
inside bits and broken themes
Felt my chest lean just a little every time the screen lit up with your schemes.
Then the typing dots started stuttering
one more half sentence left hanging in air
You said “I really want to tell you something honest” and then nothing was there
I watched that last reply you never sent like it was carved into my skin
Kept opening the app like a scratch-off ticket I was never gonna win.
I am so damn tired of being ghosted between swipes and half-finished lines
Little bright promises turning sour
wasting all my times
If love is somewhere in this mess it keeps skipping past my lane
All I get is left on read again
scrolling through the same old pain.
Another match, another opener
copy-paste charm with a slightly different twist, “Hey
how is your night going” that you will probably never even miss
You send a laughing face
then vanish like a cheap trick in a bar
I sit here replaying tiny pings like they mattered
like we ever got far.
My friends tell me “take a break
” like I haven’t tried to quit this ride
But the quiet of my bedroom walls feels sharper when the phone stays to the side
So I go back in like a gambler ready to lose what they never had
Swipe through smiles and filtered angles until my eyes go bad.
I am so damn tired of being ghosted between swipes and half-finished lines
Every almost-conversation turning into something that declines
If there is a real connection in this sea of “maybe when
” It keeps sailing off without me while I drown in left on read again.
I got threads full of “good mornings” that died by one p.m.
Plans for coffee that never left the DM
“Let us definitely meet this weekend” then no reply by Sunday night
I scroll back through the silence
looking for the light.
Sometimes I wonder if I am doing this wrong
if my jokes land heavy or too sharp
If my face does not fit the filter math
if the bio sounds too dark
Maybe I am just background chatter
noise you don’t need to keep
Just another lonely stranger buried while you sleep.
Still
I catch myself rewriting that one perfect opening line
As if the right set of letters could bend the world and make you mine
As if timing and distance and every wound in our throats
Could be healed by a match and a couple of digital notes.
I am so damn tired of being ghosted between swipes and half-finished lines
Little sparks that never touch down
faded flirting in thin designs
If love is more than dopamine and a scroll that never ends
Why do I feel more alone each time the app says we are friends.
Tonight I drop the phone face down, let the battery die
Lie still in the dark and stop asking why
If someone wants the real me they can find me off this screen
Till then it is just me and my shadow
done with the machine.