A novel is written within the depths of your irises;

A smile that plays upon a happy boy,

One with black hair and creme-colored skin.

His eyes beg to tell the hidden sadness.

Once his heart cracked open,

He patched himself together before any one of us could quite comprehend.

His trace still lingers behind closed eyelids,

Bringing a sort of aching I have yet to understand.

He is threaded unto a woolen sweater

shared on a high school bench in October.

His grip tightened,

eyes boring the story he had been longing to share,

disappearing into the autumn wind.