The Song You Sang When You Were Young

This was taken days before his death.

He already knew he was leaving.

This photo haunts me.

You had a song you sang

when you were young;
who you were
you already knew,
long before the laughing buffoons
who tormented you
had a clue.

You were my friend,
always waiting for me
at the corner of Richter and Elliott
in the snow.
We’d crunch across the field
to the lighted school,
where you would play my champion
and I would play the fool.

I lost you for a time;
recall your gaze at me,
so wondering and sad,
as you left my house that day,
my ignorant ex,
beard all a-bristle,
obviously mad,
your eyes speaking
what you were much too kind
to say.

I found you years later,
when I was free,
so glad to finally be
that friend to you
that you’d always been
to me.

But you were tired, by then:
gay-bashed, dismissed
by the system

as a being of little worth,

definitively, by your own hand,

you left this earth.
Your note to me said

you hoped I'd understand.
You were glad I found you,

and your love was true,
but you couldn’t take
how hard life was
just trying to be you.

You had a song you sang
when you were young.
When it stopped, I lost you
for the second time;
the rest of your beautiful song
will forever be unsung.

for Marian's prompt at Real Toads: Revelation