He was embedded in the plastic of a moldy lawn chair;
clinging on to his Newport and his facade of popularity.

Nobody missed him, nobody spoke his name, but you couldn't miss the manifest feeling of him that hung in the halls by rusty nails.

He is the feeling of a cough, but when you move your chest to remove him, nothing but dry air comes out and the increasingly haunting feeling of being choked from the inside out over whelms you.

He no longer stood in the back hallway, smoke circling around him as he stood observing, but every time you pass it you get a whiff of polo cologne and tobacco; The invisible memorial of him.

They said they found him, clinging to his heart, on the tiles of his upstairs bathroom. His parents say it was suicide, i know deep down inside he died from the hypothermia of isolation.

They called him crazy, they called him insane but that doesn't stop the fake tears that split from their faces as if they were empty glasses with a milk stain.

Although people can't seem to remember, they can't seem to forget, that the boy in the back of the chemistry class was now nothing more than the ashes of his unlit cigarette.

sjr // 12-18-15