She asked you a question then went quiet: what to send next

Read the question she asked before you read the silence. If she asked something open and personal, like what you cook or what you did last weekend, she was probably trying to get to know you and expected a follow-up. If she asked something light, like whether you've seen a particular show, she may have been filling a gap and moved on once she had your answer. The silence after a personal question means more than the silence after a throwaway one.

Also look at what she sent before the question. A long, engaged run of messages followed by a short question often means she was done with that thread and used the question to close it politely. A thin thread where she's been asking you things all along suggests she's interested and got distracted. That's a very different situation from a conversation she's losing interest in.

The reply should hand her a single, low-effort thing to respond to. Pick one specific detail from her original question or your answer and ask about it, or make a light comment that naturally invites her to say something back. A question about her cooking works better as a follow-up than a closing remark about how good stir fry is. Keep it to one idea. Two questions in one message make her choose which to answer, and often she answers neither.

The reply should also be easy to ignore without any cost to her. If your message demands a reaction, like "so what do you think" or "tell me more", she'll feel the weight of it and may put it off. Something that just opens a door and lets her walk through when she has time keeps the thread alive without the pressure.

Timing matters more than the wording here. If you send your reply late at night after she's already gone quiet, it can read as an attempt to re-engage at an odd hour, and that tends to land badly. Send it in the middle of a normal day, when she's most likely to see it and respond without it feeling like a late-night move. If you already sent one message and she didn't answer, wait at least a full day before sending another. A second nudge within a few hours almost always reads as chasing.

If you've sent one reply and there's still nothing after a day or two, let it sit. You can send one more light message later in the week if the conversation was really going somewhere, but make it a fresh topic, not a restatement of the last one. If that also gets no response, stop. The thread has ended, and continuing to send messages into it just makes the ending more awkward for both of you.