Part 1

Part One: The Drafts Prison

the worst moment of realization

POV: "When you discover that you are chronicling their absence, while they are chronicling a new life with someone else."

Epigraph: "Disappointment is not in their departure; disappointment is that you locked yourself in their dark room for years, only to discover later that they demolished the entire house and built in its place a palace in which you do not even have a corner."

Layla lived in a different time from the world. The clock read eleven at night by the city's time, but by her heart's time it read "two years, three months, and four days" of absence.

As was her habit every night, the light of the phone was the sole companion to her pale features. She did not open social media apps, nor did she check the "Stories" (Stories), but went directly to the messaging app, tapped "Create message," typed in the recipient field his name that was no longer uttered, and began to write in the drafts:

"My dear absent one... Today it rained for the first time this winter. Do you remember the grey coat you covered me with one rainy day? It still carries your scent, and I still... refuse to wash it so the last trace of you will not leave."

She tapped "Save as draft." The number at the top pointed coldly to: (842).

Eight hundred and forty-two days of stories no one had read, and words that had died in the throat of the phone. She thought these drafts were the thread of smoke that tied her to reality, and that when he returned — and she believed in his return — she would present them to him as a deed of absolution for her loyalty.

A strange notification cut the thread of her thoughts. "the old university group chat" whose notifications she had muted long ago. She opened the link one of her classmates had sent with a curiosity that regret later killed.

It was a digital wedding invitation, adorned with white roses and dreamy music. And in the middle, the blood froze in Layla's veins.

"Yasser & Mariam"... and the date: tomorrow.

Yasser, the owner of the grey coat, the owner of draft number 842, was smiling in the photo with a sincerity she had never seen in him. He did not look like someone waiting for a message, or feeling the cold of winter, or remembering an old coat. He looked... like a "survivor" of her drowning.

In that moment, Layla felt the coldness of the phone in her hand as if it were a piece of ice. She looked at the number of drafts (842). She realized she had not been writing love letters, she had been writing a "detention record" for herself. She had been building a prison of words, while he had been building a life of deeds... with someone else.

With trembling fingers, she tapped "Select all" in the drafts folder. She paused for a second, remembered every letter, every tear that had fallen on the screen, then tapped "Delete."

842 drafts deleted.

The folder became completely empty... completely like her heart in that moment.