[The following is a poem I wrote in high school in reflection on the suicide of a classmate]

There’s an empty desk today
And yet the textbooks are still open
The chalk is still in motion
The class is still in session,
The space cannot be filled
For the presence is forgotten
A parent’s own begotten
A youth’s demise is rotten,
Was he more a ghost
In the present or the past
A living outcast
Life ceases way too fast,
The others shrug their shoulders
There goes another one
It cannot be undone
Bless the little son,
Sadness will fade slowly
Nothing will be the same way
The kids will always say
There’s an empty desk today.