57 minutes.
It’ll be your birthday
in fifty-seven minutes.
I’m sitting in my bed, in the pitch black,
remembering your laugh that is still
so fresh in my brain.
If one could look inside my head,
they, too, would be in awe that you
have already been gone
over three months.

19 years.
You were almost
Nineteen years old.
Things still feel surreal,
as though you’re
to come home momentarily,
laughing alongside us
at how much we worried.
No.
I know you can’t,
no matter how much I wish it were so.

104 days.
I heard you had died
One hundred four days ago.
I was in the girls’ bathroom at school,
and was told you had passed.
I hit the floor so hard,
I bruised my knees.
I was hysterical,
yet pulled myself together
and went to class.
My teacher kicked me out of her room that day,
she said I was causing a distraction
because I was crying so hard.
I left without a word.
She found out the next hour.
She cried, too.

0.
Zero minutes, zero hours, zero days,
months, years, decades,
zero is your magic number;
you are never coming back.
I think about you every day.
I wonder how it got this way.
I wonder what the universe thought
that made it decide
it was time for you to go.
I try not to dwell,
but still see your face.
Whether I’m in Walmart,
the mall,
or even in school,
I still see your face.
Zero percent of the time, it’s you.