dear Eva

Eva used to leave me phantom texts all the time. She would leave me more empty texts than ones with actual words in them.

They drove me crazy at first, but the days unpunctuated by her blank messages were lonely and unsettling. These little rectangles of clean light were messages of her movements. They proved her presence. The vibration in my pocket was a tap on the shoulder, a small circling motion in the corner of my eye. A sneeze.

I leave out a single letter, tied to the railing of the house that we both used to live in. It is blank and it is my phantom text for Eva. I don’t know how to convey my presence to those who are dead. I wonder if she has received this phantom text that rustles and sways for her attention in all that rushing air, and I wonder if I haven’t received any back.