The Last Human on Earth Is a Poet

The Last Human on Earth Is a Poet

By Muhammad ALI

They say the stars don't listen. But I still write.

Each night, beneath a rusted sky, I sit on the old rooftop with my pen, notebook, and a candle stub salvaged from the ruins of a cathedral. The city below sleeps in silence—its lights long dead, its windows broken, its walls covered in ivy and ash. No footsteps echo. No laughter rolls across the streets. Just wind and time.

I am the last.

There were others, once. I remember their voices. The man who whistled while sweeping the bakery. The woman who sang lullabies on her balcony. Children who ran wild in the park, their knees stained green. Now, only my pen sings.

It’s been 2,118 days since the silence began. I stopped counting the hours long ago.

At first, I screamed into the void. I kicked at rusted doors and burned books just to feel something. But paper is precious now. Words even more so. I don’t write to be heard—I write so I don’t forget how to speak.

I write to the stars.

Tonight’s letter begins like all the others:

Dear Stars,

I hope you’re still there. You’ve always been distant, but tonight you seem lonelier than me.

Somewhere out there, maybe someone is looking through a telescope. Maybe they’ll find this notebook someday, wedged between crumbling stone and hope. I write for them—for the ones who never knew us.

Today I found a piano. One key still worked. It sounded like a cry underwater. I played it anyway.

It reminded me of a boy I once loved. He used to hum in his sleep. He stopped before the end came.

I live on canned beans and bitter memories. I wear mismatched coats and necklaces made from old keys—each from a door that no longer exists.

I miss the color yellow. Do you have yellow where you are? Not the sun-yellow that burns. I mean the soft yellow—lemon ice cream, childhood raincoats, streetlights in fog.

I would trade my last candle to see that yellow again.

People used to ask why I wrote poetry. Said it wouldn’t feed me. Wouldn’t save me.

They were right.

Poetry didn’t save me. It gave me something to die with.

But I haven’t died yet.

Each letter I write is a breath. A heartbeat. A rebellion against forgetting. If I am the last, then I won’t vanish quietly.

If you ever read this, know we were more than dust and wires.

We laughed. We danced. We made pancakes on rainy Sundays.

Yes, we ruined everything. But we also loved—sometimes beautifully.

And sometimes, that love sounded like poetry.

Tonight, I signed my name differently:

—Eli, Earth’s Last Poet

It felt dramatic. But fitting.

The stars blinked back, silent. I don’t expect a reply. But tomorrow, I’ll write again.

I always do.

Somewhere, ink meets paper. A flame flickers against the wind. And the last human on Earth writes another poem to the stars.