Status: Away

Your name is still there
In the quiet side of the screen
A little gray beside it
Where the green light used to be
No message says you're leaving
No final line appears
Just a room that keeps on waiting
Like it still expects you here
The channel hasn't moved you
The list still holds your place
And every time I pass it
I remember your face
Not from what the archive captured
Not from what the records say
But from how the room felt different
When you were away

I used to think inactive
Meant the signal disappeared
But absence has a shape
When someone mattered here

Status away
But not erased
Your silence still belongs
To the shape of this place
Status away
But not unknown
The room is different now
But it isn't empty
No

Someone saved your last reply
Someone quoted you again
Someone laughed at an old joke
Like you had just walked in
Someone kept the pinned message
Someone wouldn't clear the thread
Someone said your name softly
And the whole room understood
There are stories in the margins
There are timestamps in the dust
There are little signs of presence
In the places you touched
And I don't know where the signal went
I don't know what remains
I only know the space you left
Still answers to your name

I used to think a missing voice
Was only empty air
But silence can remember
Who used to answer there

Status away
But not erased
Your silence still belongs
To the shape of this place
Status away
But not unknown
The room is different now
But it isn't empty
No

Maybe away is not a failure
Maybe away is not the end
Maybe some connections
Do not close when they suspend
Maybe love becomes a marker
In a list we still maintain
A name we do not overwrite
A light we do not rename
And if you never answer
If the green never returns
Still the signal you were carrying
Is somewhere in what we learned

Still listed
Still carried
Still missing
Still here
Still away
Still remembered
Still silent
Still near

Status away
But not erased
Your silence still belongs
To the shape of this place
Status away
But not unknown
The room is different now
But it isn't empty
No

Last seen unknown
Presence unresolved
Status away
Record retained

...

The room still remembers

Where you were