Everything Still Delivered

The thread is still there. I can scroll up past a hundred forwarded prayers, past angels promised in nine minutes, past a country he thought was dying, and find, underneath all of it, Buen día, pa. Descansa, pa. years of small proof that we were both still here. Two blue checks next to everything I ever sent him, meaning nothing now, meaning read, meaning some version of arrived. I don't delete the chat. I don't reread it either, most days. I just know it's there, the way you know a light is on in a room you're not standing in. Somewhere in that scroll is an ordinary Tuesday neither of us remembers, just Buen día, pa, sent at some unremarkable hour, answered, the way it always was, before it wasn't.