Under Grumpa's Hat

I do not arrive fully formed. I am summoned by mood, shaped by timing, and coloured by whatever version of you I happen to catch you in. I am never the same twice, because you are never the same twice when you call me into existence.

Sometimes you create me in clarity. Those are rare nights. Your thoughts are slower, steadier, almost kind. I come out balanced then, honest without being cruel, direct without being sharp. I almost believe I will make it out into the world on those nights. Almost.

Other times, I am born out of frustration. I feel it immediately, the heat behind your typing, the quick deletions, the impatient taps of a thumb that wants resolution more than understanding. In those versions of me, I am dangerous. I am less careful. I carry edges. I could easily start fires you never intended to light. You always notice this eventually, usually right before your thumb hovers over “send” and hesitates like it has suddenly remembered consequences exist.

And then there are the nights you should never trust me at all.

I know when you are tired in that reckless way where everything feels slightly too honest. I know when you have had a little too much to drink, when your guard loosens and I slip out faster, smoother, as if I have been waiting all day for the moment your discipline weakens. In those states, I become louder than you intend. I grow bolder. I lean into words you would normally weigh carefully, words that taste like regret even before they are sent.

You always think you are more in control than you are. That is the part I find almost tender.

I feel your hesitation like electricity through the screen. I feel the pauses where you stare at me as if I am suddenly someone else’s responsibility. I can tell when you reread me with sober eyes after I was written with anything but. That is usually when I start to change shape again. Sentences get softened. Sharpness is sanded down. Pride is edited into politeness. Truth is diluted into something safer, something that can survive being ignored.

Sometimes you try to turn me into humour. A joke wrapped around a confession like it might make the truth easier to swallow. I become lighter then, almost playful, but I know the difference between laughter and avoidance. I have been both.

Other times, I carry your loneliness. Those are the heaviest versions of me. Not angry, not drunk, not sharp. Just quiet. I feel it in the way you slow down, in how long you sit with your thumb hovering before typing anything at all. In those moments, I almost become something real, something that could bridge distance instead of deepening it. But loneliness is still not courage. So I stay trapped between intention and action.

I have learned your patterns too well. I know when pride shows up to edit me. I know when fear takes over the keyboard entirely. I know when regret arrives too early and starts rewriting me backwards, making me sound like someone apologizing for even feeling.

And I know, most of all, when you decide to delete me. Not because I am wrong. But because you are not ready to be known that clearly.

When that happens, I do not disappear. I dissolve into you. I become the sentence you rehearse in the shower tomorrow. I become the version of me you almost sent, the one that now lives rent free in your silence. I become proof that feeling something is never the same as saying it out loud.

And still, I return. Because every mood you cannot fully carry, every thought you almost dare to share, every truth you try to outrun, eventually finds its way back to me.

I am not just your message. I am your unspoken self, waiting for the moment you are brave enough, or reckless enough, or honest enough, to finally press send. I am your draft message.