I never met you. I never got the chance. We were like a relay team, you and I. As soon as I arrived, you… went away. We might have met, eventually, but when you left, you went to a place where I can never reach you, until an angel comes to take me home. For now I must be content with looking at the pictures on your mother’s shelf, when she’s not watching, and trying to imagine what you were like. She talks about you sometimes, tells me stories of… before.


Before. Before your friends came over. Before someone’s brother gave him a gun. Before you decided to play Russian Roulette. Before he pulled the trigger. Before the bullet tore through you, as if you were nothing but dust.


I can picture you, falling to the floor, a look of shock on your face, and I wish I couldn’t. I can see you crumpling like a coat falling off its hanger. I can hear the frantic, distant voices of your friends, their cries becoming quieter and quieter as you slip into darkness. And I can feel your mother’s anguish, a deep rooted sorrow that knows no bounds and escapes all understanding. And I wish I couldn’t.


Through this all, I can’t help but wonder what might have been. Perhaps, Ben, if you were here instead of in Heaven, the boy in the pictures would be happy, with a wife and kids. Maybe there would be pictures of a smiling man in graduate’s robes, instead of a long gone teenager whose life was cut unbearably short. Then there would be pictures of a hugging family of four. Instead, there is only three, the empty space beside them a resounding testament of what might have been.