This is a free write I did along with some students of mine last semester when they were writing their Derrion Albert tributes.

This is how a face changes
How smiles are stomped
This is how corn rows
become the fault lines of a skull
how a skull becomes a puzzle
tectonic plates shifting over
swollen brain
This is how an eye bursts
How a retina bends to accept
the force of a Nike swoosh
This is how fingers break
how blood bubbles over knuckles
of children, how hands become
skeletons never to flip the page
of American History again
This is death recorded
This is humanity’s close up
Bleed for the camera
This is the last Timberland
his body was awake to feel
This is his nerves firing
in a furious trill as his soul shakes
free of the carnage
This is a graduation cap
waterlogged in the Styx
A song clotted to a child’s
splintered ribs