Soraya

 Soraya woke up to the glow of her phone. Already, notifications piled up like unopened letters from a life she wasn’t living. A meme from Amir, a vacation reel from Liana, a news headline screaming chaos in the Middle East. She thumbed through it all, absently chewing her toast, barely tasting it.

Days blurred. She’d sit in cafés and sidewalk bistros, eyes darting between her screen and the world outside, always watching, never in it. Conversations became half-hearted nods while her fingers raced to capture the right angle, the right caption. "Lemme just check real quick," she’d tell herself, but "real quick" swallowed hours.

Then, one evening absent-mindedly, her phone died. No charger. Just silence.

Annoyed, she looked up allowing her eyes to capture the reality of the moment. The sunset wasn’t pixels but liquid gold over the city. The couple beside her laughed, not for the camera, but because they meant it. A street vendors yelling, usually drowned out by her earbuds, curled into her chest like a secret.

She was here. Actually here.

The next morning, she did her best and left her phone at home. At first, her fingers itched for the phantom scroll. But then, she noticed things. The way her coworker’s eyes crinkled when he joked. The bitter kick of coffee she’d never paused to savor. The quiet thrill of finishing a task without interruption. The world around her noticed her too. Or so it seemed, she had always been there, but she was only now realizing that she was.

Weeks later, Liana posted a photo of Soraya, head thrown back, mid-laugh, no filter. "Who kidnapped my screen-zombie friend, boy?" she teased.

Soraya smiled. She didn’t "like" the post. She was too busy living it.

Life isn’t in the updates but the unshared moments between them.