First Minutes
The discovery sinks in as we spring into action
Adrenaline kicks in, heart pounding, blood rushing.
My mind confusedly putting pieces together.
First Few Hours
Calls are made to paramedics and cops and investigators swarm our house.
Our car goes faster than what is safe as we follow the ambulance as it carried what we would later learn was only her body and a few dedicated paramedics.
A time of death is announced and more tearful calls are made, this time to family and later to friends.
We leave hours later surrounded by a mournful silence.
First Day
We sat on the on the couch in a shocked silence, which was only broken by my calls to her friends, the ringing of the house phone and doorbell.
First Week
The silence was deafening and I had to escape.
So I returned to school after making arrangements with my family for the cremation and shedding my own tears for the first time. I caught the last two classes of the day and began burying myself in my classwork after telling those who needed to know.
First Month
Our own questions were behind every turn as we handled finances, possessions, settling things and celebrating her short life.  
I began to tell more and more of my friends.
Second Month
The pain was still fresh and stinging,
My mother returned to work for the first time.
Third Month
I held back my tears in English.
The play we read reminding me of her and running lines with her the previous year.
Fourth Month
I let it get to me while locked in my room, wishing it was my boyfriend's arms around me instead of my paint-stained jacket as I painted the canvas as black as I was feeling.
Recording my tears for him and watching how he hid his own watery eyes the next day in class as I honored our promise.
Her birthday passed and my mother planted flowers.
Fifth Month
After an uneventful spring break, my dad began staying home from work, unable to handle the weight of his thoughts.
Sixth Month
School ended and summer began and for the first time in what was now fourteen years, I didn't have a sister. I was alone.
Seventh Month
Slowly but surely the pain faded, with the help of scattered therapists, counselors, and mountains of support from family and friends. Summer traditions continued but were never the same.
Eighth Month
The weight of her absence doesn’t rest on my shoulders as heavy anymore.
Ink stains me with her memory. The pain I felt, saw and personified over many pages as we still face it.
My father has returned to work as we each learn to deal with the missing piece of our family in our own ways.
Ninth Month
School begins.
It's my junior year and school is starting for the first time since 3rd grade without my sister. My mother would always take a "first-day" picture, the tradition faded when we attended different schools. Maybe it wasn't so annoying after all.
Tenth Month
It's October, my, our, favorite month. Lost memories run through my head along with missed opportunities. Did we even carve pumpkins last year? Last year we argued about passing out candy but both ended up falling asleep. When was the last time we went to the County Fair? The Mullet Festival? Missed opportunities for silly reasons.
Eleventh Month
The Holiday season is kicking off. Soon it will be Thanksgiving. Her absence is noticeable as I stand amongst my family and celebrate. The only ones who don't ignore it are the little ones, repeatedly asking where she is as the grownups look uncomfortable. I don't know what to tell them.
Twelveth Month
The Holidays are in full swing and I can't help but think of the last one we all spent together. She passed before Christmas. They aren't the same anymore.

One Year
Its hard to believe that a year has passed without her. Her room is the same as if shes just at school. We spent the anniversary doing things she enjoyed, like taking the family dog to the beach and sharing cotton candy.
We haven't moved on, not in the slightest. My mother still cries, I don't think she'll ever stop. But as the days pass I can see how it gets easier and easier for my family to be happy again.

Sine waves, perpetual motion
Centripetal force, density of the ocean
Associates, Bachelors
Student Ambassadors
Register, register, schedules, grades
Grants and scholarships, tuition is paid
No snooze button, turn off the alarm
Losing some sleep.  It's ok, though, no harm
Friendly teachers and **** instructors
Digital logic and semiconductors
Homework, classwork, essays, papers
Last minute class of procrastinators
Get up, get blazed.  'Fore school, 'nutha blunt
High while accepting student of the month
Higher than you, and my grades, too, are higher
How smart would I be if I put out the fire?
Gen. Ed., English, Mathematics, Psychology
Now on to the good stuff, much richer chronology
Top of my class, highest grade in the program
In just a few years, I'll have money in BOTH hands
This hand-to-mouth **** ain't for me
I'm tired of living week-to-week
Broke, tired, and hungry day after day
But when payday comes, it'll be here to stay
You don't have to do as I do
But my feet are too small to fill these big shoes
If you think I can't fill them, then surely you're trippin'
But do whatcha do, cause my burgers need flippin'

pained & broken
bruised & scabbed
but not defined,
by my relapse.

hold me tight
soften the blows
treat me so,
too many now know

10/24/16
you can do it
you are worth it
I love you dear,
scars included;

sunshine pouring through the pane
clouded air, foggy brain
cup 'o chocolate & warm duvet
cover my head and hide away

now a cave where creatures lurk
darkness seeps through
creeks and smirks
pained delirium through tired eyes
dukes up now, patience thin
fighting sleep, leaded lids

all in the end
to give up and make friends

Standing on the scenic overlook,
(the one just a few miles out)
the city lights shine brighter than stars--
multicolored luminescence burning
its image on the insides of my eyelids,

and you, who drove me here,
(some 3AM adventure created
from a series of “I-don’t-know”s)
inch closer to the precipice,
sinking knee-deep in snow before
facing me with eyes that seem
backlit by street lamps and 24-hour signs.

You told me how you so loved
the feeling of being awake and alone,
while the city slept and yet--
I felt only loneliness,
stinging silence scratching marks,
my ribs battered from working
too hard, and I could feel them
cave in beneath solidarity’s weight--

alone, though you stood beside me
speaking of snowflake matters
that melted as they touched my ears,
your words dripping into my hair,
wasted on a mind preoccupied
with retrospective tunnel-vision:

First: the morning I woke to find my mother
screaming and stomping loud,
her plate broken on the carpet and
when she left, my father’s eyes, they
turned to sea-glass as he stood blank
(gone, I suppose, in a different way),
leaving me responsible for my little sister,
who hid behind the corner.

Then: the time I found my little sister
crying into my jersey-knit sheets and
asking me to help her skip school--
she couldn’t bear to face the boys
whose uninvited touch lingered
painful on her adolescent skin
(self-inflicted cuts would appear
in the following months)--
the memory drowned with whiskey and ***.

Later: my mother’s cancer--
no, liver failure that nearly killed
everyone who waited in the white-walled
hospital, bad food sour on our tongues,
stomachs cramping hard as if we felt
the surgery deep inside our own livers--
and I with my classwork, face buried,
because no one should see me cry.

I suppose the sandbag solidarity fell upon me
in parts, dragged me from lofty childhood,
each moment a simultaneous end and beginning
to all that followed and held me far behind--
further still, though you stand only
one foot away from me, near enough to reach
(and I can imagine my hand outstretched)--
somehow the cityscape seems closer.

our time together today
makes me want
to write pretty poems
and sweet nothings,
doodle initials inside hearts
all over classwork
and notebook covers,
but I can't focus
cannot concentrate enough,
For every time you laughed today
every time you made me smile
every time I caught you staring
every. single. time
you touched me
runs and replays
through my mind
and blocks out
my concentration on anything else
but you,
but us...
-IrisMadden

Tell my favourite teacher that I'm still her darling boy
who used to look up to the rainy sky, miss home and cry
still as cunning and playful but now prose and poetry are the toy
and if she saw me play she would wonder and sigh
at that boy who made everything he touched filthy
for I find crisp clean pages and on them throw mud of words
who's still of indifference, condemned and guilty
Her little boy whose fascination was chasing butterflies and birds
tell my teacher I'm still her child, still not biting my tongue
but regurgitating all the bitter truth the world detests
busting in rage at hypocrisy and puffing pride out my lungs
I'm still bearing the eminent enmity my bluntness begets
tell her I'm still firmly clinging to the slipping dreams she instilled
barely floating, with waves of reality attempting to drown my talent and have her killed
*tell her I'm still doing pieces out of my daily struggles and torments
and posting them on social media, I'm that brave
even attempting to do double Shakespearean sonnets
writing about my illusive dreams and the unreachable I crave
someone tell my favourite teacher that I'm still her son
going against the currents of injustice instead of flowing with the river
taking the bull by his horns, doing whatever I can
yet sometimes giving in to detestable ways,corroding my liver
tell Victorious that I'm still impossible to comprehend
loving fictional writings while holding my classwork in contempt
why loath lectures,but love learning,why not pretend?
not even university education could be exempt
I think about my teacher everyday,she's still my Mama
but I hardly talk to her for my life's preoccupied with karma's drama