Silent Halls

Written after the deaths of two students in my school. It describes the Monday following their death.

The school halls are never silent,
they are never completely void of sound.
But today they are hushed with grief,
quiet voices and quiet feet.

A boy who was nearly a man
and a man still so near to boy.
Neither of them done with this world
but neither of them here anymore.

Ironic how we honour them now,
with quiet voices and silent prayers,
when in their lives they knew no volume
below twenty on a one to fifteen scale.

Bits of red stand brilliant on black.
we remember even in grief.
With two more names on the list of dead
they wonder will he make three?

The death of a child
has unsurprisingly young mourners
who cry into their textbooks
while their teachers cry into theirs.

They hated school,
but that is where it is quiet,
we think because their mourners gather here,
but maybe it's because they're gone
that voices, their voices, can't echo in the halls.

Author's Note

The image is of the crash site.