The Unread Message

You know it's there. You put the phone down anyway.

Barthes wrote about the one who waits — how waiting is never neutral, how it transforms the person doing it. He was thinking about lovers. He might as well have been thinking about this.

The ten seconds before you open it are the last ten seconds in which you are still whoever you were before it arrived. Before you become the person their message requires you to be.

The blue tick withheld as power is one story. The blue tick withheld as shelter is another. Most people are only ever accused of the first.