Archive

I didn't delete our photos. I archived them. Now I'm the last proof we ever happened.

Forty-eight posts. Two years of captions with too many emojis. Her in my jumper. Us on a train. Her birthday, my terrible cake, the candle shaped like a seven because the shop had run out of two.

Her name was Priya. When we split, she told me to "do whatever you need to do." So I did what cowards do. I didn't delete. Deleting felt violent. I archived. Tucked it all away where only I could see.

Last night, 2 AM, I opened the archive. I wanted to look at one photo. Just one. The train.

It wasn't there.

I scrolled. Searched. I checked my camera roll, my backups, my cloud. Nothing. Gone. Corrupted. A glitch, maybe. I panicked. Texted my friend Sam. "Did Instagram delete my archive?"

"No clue, mate," he said. "Why do you care?"

Then a thought, cold in my stomach. I opened her profile.

Empty. A fresh grid. Not a single photo of us. No train. No cake. Not even a comment. She'd deleted every trace. Not archived. Erased.

I checked the tagged photos. Nothing. Our friends had removed their photos too. The group shots. The party pictures. Everywhere, a quiet cleanup.

The only place left was my archive. Forty-eight photos. Hidden.

I'm not the guy who loved her anymore.

I'm the guy who's still keeping the evidence.