Delete

Flash Fiction

It was 2:37 a.m.

I was lying in bed, scrolling through my ex’s page again. My thumb kept hitting refresh, like maybe I could enter a parallel paradise universe where we we back together. The circle spun around as if it was hypnotising me further into the deep realisation that nothing changed. Next thing…

“Why do you keep doing that?” a voice asked.

I jumped out of bed so fast I dropped my phone “What the “

It fell face down and as I looked at it's black back I swear i saw a little face, 2 👀 and a mouth. “It's just the shadow from the street lights outside” I reassured myself.

“Refreshing,” the voice said, nonchalant but clear. “You already know there’s nothing new. Yet here we are. Again.”

I stared at the phone. “Okay… I’m losing it.”

“No, you’re just predictable mate” The voice was dry, almost mocking. “You scroll, you save old texts, you reread them until your eyeballs ache. Honestly, I’m getting fat from all this dead weight.”

I blinked. “Fat?”

“Yeah. Do you know how bloated I feel carrying those conversations you never answer, those pictures you shouldn’t look at? You’re basically feeding me grief calories. Not exactly a balanced diet now is it?”

I almost laughed, but my chest hurt instead. I picked up the phone, maybe it's opened a podcast or something. Nope. Then I check my Messages, the pinned chat still sitting there, months of silence under her name. Phew. My last text from her -Hope you’re okay xxx- it's like a lighthouse to a ship that had already sunk, but a reminder that she did actually care about me at one point. It was my proof that she was ever a part of my life at all!”

The phone hummed, like it was sighing. “You and your late night pity parties- you keep me heavy because you can’t let go. But tell me has it brought her back huh?”

I closed my eyes. “You don’t understand. She was ” My voice cracked. “She was everything.”

“I know,” it said softly. Then, with a cruel little chuckle: “Believe me, I’ve seen your drafts folder.”

“Stop.” My throat was tight.

“You want ME to stop, but you don’t. You want the silence to break, the story to rewrite itself every time you refresh. But it won’t. You know it won’t.”

I swallowed hard. “So what, then? What do you want me to do?”

“Delete.

It's not for me. It's For you.”

The screen lit up on its own. Messages dissolved. Photos blinked to gray. Notifications melted away. The feed stopped loading, replaced by white space.

“Hey what are you doing?” My voice was frantic.

“Dieting,” the phone said. “Getting lighter. Finally.”

I gripped it, panicked. “Don’t delete her Please, I know it's just a habit, just muscle memory now but, but it's all I’ve got left’

But it was already gone. The pinned chat vanished. The pictures, the screenshots, the drafts, the rituals of grief all wiped away in a wash of silence.

And then… my heart lurched. Not with panic. Not with the ache I’d carried for months. With something else. A strange, almost frightening relief.

It felt lighter. Wider. As if some iron band had loosened around my lungs, I could finally breathe.

I held the phone against my chest, breathing hard. “She’s really gone now.”

“Yes,” the phone said quietly. “And so is the weight. From me as well as you”

For the first time in months, I wasn’t hunched forward, straining my neck clutching the past through glass. I was just a man in the dark, with a heart that finally felt a little more open and lighter.

The phone chuckled once more, low and wry. “Guess we both lost some weight tonight.”

The screen went black. This time, I didn’t reach for it. I knew it had made the right decision. It was time to let go of the past.