That’s All I Ask

Some nights do not break your heart all at once, they simply ask you to hold the person you love as if dawn were a thief waiting at the door.

All I Ask — Adele

If this night has been written as our last,

then do not hand me a quiet goodbye wrapped in trembling smiles and unfinished sentences.

Do not stand before me like someone already leaving while I am still here, still foolish enough to memorize the way your shadow leans toward mine.

No, come closer.

Close enough for me to forget how the world pulls things apart.

Hold me not like something fragile, not like a chapter you are afraid to finish, but like I have mattered in ways you may never say aloud.

Let your arms become the only place where time forgets to move.

For once, do not love me cautiously.

I have had enough of almost, enough of glances that stop short of confession, enough of silence wearing the face of restraint.

Tonight, I do not want the careful version of you.

I want the truth.

Take my hand like you mean to remember it.

Like somewhere beneath your fear, you have imagined what it would feel like if we had been brave sooner.

Let me feel the weight of your hesitation finally surrender.

And if the night must end, let it end beautifully.

Let us sway in the hush of our borrowed hours, two aching souls pretending the dark was made for mercy.

Let your forehead rest against mine like a quiet prayer, like something sacred has found itself too late.

And kiss me not as a question, not as regret, but as though this fleeting moment has become the only honest thing we have left.

Let it be deep enough to haunt me.

Let it say everything your guarded heart was too afraid to ruin with words.

Because tomorrow may ask us to become strangers again.

Tomorrow may dress us in distance, in politeness, in the unbearable costume of moving on.

So tonight, before morning steals this from us, before reason returns to separate what longing tried to mend,

let me have one memory untouched by doubt.

Something warm enough to hold when loneliness arrives.

Something real enough that years from now, when your name still wanders through the ruins of me, I can say there was, at least, one night where neither of us pretended.

If this is where we end,

then let me leave with the kind of goodbye that aches because it was real.

Not forever.

Just once, with all the love we never had the courage to keep.

So before the sun teaches us how to live without this, let me have one final moment that feels more like love than loss.

That’s all I ask.