𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗬: “The Message I Never Expected” by Hayden Jam Recto

Layout by: Cristian Tulisana

Published by: Francen Anne Perez

Date Published: November 13, 2025

Time Published: 12:22 PM 

Category: Poetry 

Theme: Love in the Haunting of What Could’ve Been

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬?

Your name appeared in my inbox

like a raindrop slipping through a sealed window—

a sound too familiar, too soft

to ignore.

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

Because it was you again—

the ghost I learned to stop looking for.

𝘏𝘪.

Two letters that cracked the calm I built.

I replied 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰, pretending not to tremble,

and when you said 𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘶𝘱 ?

the words echoed like a door creaking open

in a restaurant I swore I’d already left.

I thought I’d buried you beneath healed hours,

under the weight of ordinary days.

But there you were,

pulling at the thread of everything

I’d carefully stitched back together.

My heart did not race—

it remembered.

It remembered how silence once felt like safety,

and how your voice once turned it into music.

You spoke as though time had simply paused,

as if we were two echoes waiting to overlap again.

I watched your words appear on the screen,

and I smiled,

not out of joy,

but out of disbelief

that ghosts could type.

Now, I keep rereading the chat—

each word an aftershock,

each silence a door left slightly open.

And I wonder—

if the past comes knocking again,

does it mean it never really left?