Death Threat

The twentieth summer of my life came with the threat of being the last. 

I sat in the bare-walled room where my doctor saw “serious” patients and thought about how all the plans I'd made for the rest of my summer were melting away. 

I thought about my roommate sitting in a dorm with my side of it empty, waiting for me to come and put my colourful posters up, even though I'd never. 

I thought about my best friend giving his first lecture as a TA and how I'd be missing out on it. 

I thought about that one course I was looking forward to the most about trauma and drugs and other things people dislike talking about.

I thought about how much I've been looking forward to kissing you in the fall. About how I might never get to hold your face again. And how I didn't realise the last I was looking into your eyes that it was going to be the last time. 

Soon enough, I'll be a name and nothing more in the student history section of our college’s website. 

And someone else will move into my side of the dorm. My roommate will learn to get used to her alarm instead. 

My best friend will find other people to meet at midnight every day and my other friends will stop missing my presence in their Thursday night parties. 

Soon enough, you will forget the sound of my voice and get used to holding someone else's body. 

I will mourn the other half of my life that ended before I realised it was the end and die in some bare-walled hospital cabin while my family surrounds me with their unending tears.

I will die knowing I didn't know all the last times were the last time.

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