this is the last time i’ll hold on to the bonfires we lit amid the cold night air in a distant beach. this is the last time i’ll put your favorite song on repeat in my car while taking detours, just to hear them for a longer period of time. this is the last time i’ll eat ice cream on a rainy day because that hobby isn’t mine and it isn’t yours, but ours, darling — and ours is that book or that photograph you left behind in a hometown you’ll never mention to the strangers of a new city.

this is the last time i’ll subconsciously touch my wrist tattoo whenever i miss you — heck, this is the last time i’ll miss you. this is the last time i’ll stay up until midnight to watch our homemade short films. this is the last time i’ll view the digital poems you compiled because darling, poems always break your heart and maybe that’s why you kept on breaking mine.

darling — this is the last time i’ll want to hold your missing arms; this is the last time i’ll want to hold on to someone who has already let me go — this is the last time i’ll want to hold onto you. and tomorrow, i’ll be letting you go and *******, i want you to feel every bit of what it’s like to be let go.

so this is the last time, darling. this is the last lines i’ll ever write for you — this is the last prose i’ll ever call poetry — the last time i’ll ever call us poetry.

the last time i’ll call us magical.

the last time i’ll call us love.