Is there a way to make it so that SMS text messages are manually marked as read?

Hey all,

Is there a way to make it so that SMS text messages are manually marked as read? The reason I ask is because I often read a text without responding, and then forget to text people back. My email program allows me to manually mark items as read so I know I've done what I needed to do with the email in question. Is this feature available for inbound SMS text messages on the iPhone 5? From my general perusing of the iPhone, I was not able to find a way to do this. Is there perhaps a 3rd party app that can implement this into text messaging?

Thank you,

Speck