Beyond the Screen

The cursor blinked, a tiny, insistent heartbeat on the vast expanse of the blank document. It was midnight, or perhaps a minute past. The digital clock on my laptop glowed a soft, judgmental blue. Jester had signed off an hour ago, his final message a string of laughing emojis that felt, to me, like a sigh.

*“Gotta go, my queen of whispers! The world outside this screen demands its jester. Until the pixels realign!”*

I’d replied with a simple heart, feeling the familiar pang of something left unsaid. It was the unspoken space between us, the nebulous realm where our online avatars dissolved and the real people, the messy, complicated, secret-keeping people, were supposed to meet. But meeting was hard when you’d spent so long crafting a performance.