The news comes like lightening
Spontaneously combusting in your mind
With no notice, no fore warning
Just a phone call, just a call
That informs you your parents
Are picking you up early

Just the minute before laughing and talking
And now the weight of the world
Seems to be teetering on your weak shoulders
The hurt like you could never smile again
All that’s left is a twitch of the lips
And an empty look in the eyes,
The light burned out
And lost forever in your grief,
Consuming you like a black hole

The world is in slow motion
As your break out of the heavy doors
And walk to your stone faced mother,
Standing by the open car door
You stop dead in your tracks
And take everything in
Because you know something is about to happen
And you must hold on to the moment

A single tear slips out of her heavy eyes
As she threatens to open her mouth
Te wind seems to be taking her words
And scattering them to some place where hurt belongs
Here, no hurt can happen

She attempts the gibberish again,
But you still cannot grasp the meaning
It is like trying to hold on to sand,
As it slips through your fingers

You rush back inside,
Away from feeling and any emotion
You look up through watery eyes,
And see your sister giggling and smiling with a friend,
Blissfully and completely unaware
Of the news that awaits her outside
These school doors

You lean against the cold wall
As your knees clack and shake
Like old bones blowing in the wind
You slowly slide down the wall,
Huddling in a protective stance that
You would only use in times of a tornado
But then again, what is the difference?

Your sister rushes over
And you see her mouth moving,
But no words make it to your ears
You lift up your head,
Heavy from the knowledge that you posses

You meet her open and vulnerable eyes,
And say in a voice that does not belong to you,
“Mom is outside.”
She pulls you up, out of the door,
Away from the curios passerby’s
Throwing curious glances at your
Swollen eyes

Your sister leads you to the passenger door
And puts you down on the leather seat
Like a small child
She glances at your mother screaming
In complete agony
And back to your silent and dripping tears

Those gibberish words are said again
There is a flash of confusion,
Watching the sand slide out of your sisters hands
Pain takes over her features
Like a sick disease
That is slowly killing you all

Phone calls are made
With more unidentifiable words
Salty tears roll down your mother’s face
And disappear into her mouth
As she talks to people
Who will now become ill
With this disease

You want to believe that he is not gone
Not lost forever
But the lifeless body sitting in front of you
In a white hospitable bed will not seem to let you

There are moans of grief and fits of rage
Creating a spinning and unforgiving storm
The flat and ominous beep
Of the machinery by his bedside
Is a ringing in your ear
That threatens to take over

He cannot die
No, it is not possible
He has always been
And will continue to be
Through the good and bad,
Happy and sad
Always there, continuing

His skin is not supposed to be that color
His body is not supposed to be so cold
You remember rapping yourself in those
Big, warm arms and
You remember kissing the prickly stubble of his face
That will no longer be,
No longer accept you again

There is a cacophony of sound
That pounds to the beat of your head
The grief takes over, realizing my big man


Is gone forever
And I never got to say goodbye.