The poem I had to write first.

This is the poem I had to write first a few weeks ago, it was the one that had to unclog the bottle.

(TW; Suicide )

Mr Hecker, You were wrong.

I once wrote a poem in which I died at the end,

but my teacher said it wasn’t allowed.

‘James, you’re not allowed to die at the end of a poem’ he said.

So now, 30 years later,

I’m writing a poem about writing a poem in which I died at the end.

A poem about a poem

My last poem was ‘not allowed’

And this is the first one since

This one is.

Allowed.

This one.

Because Mr Hecker you were so right

And yet so wrong

And ever since I wrote a poem in which I died at the end

I haven’t been able to write a poem.

Even if you meant well,

Did it ever occur to you to worry why I died in a poem?

Did you not wonder, what was wrong with my soul?

And why I had to die at the end?

Why the boy aged 15 in front of you had poetic endings in mind?

Yet you saw me too.

You saw me and thought I could be head boy

But.

I couldn’t be head boy, nor deputy or barely a prefect

because nothing about me wanted that moment,

nothing about me wanted that moment on a stage,

I wanted to be heard and seen, crying from the inside out

I could barely represent myself.

But, Mr Hecker, I treasure that,

You believed in me, well beyond what I could even consider.

Sitting in class surrounded by dreamers,

Whilst I was crying inside, wondering how to survive.

Alone, trying to make it.

I died in a poem

So you could ask me why.

I died because creativity died

and my soul had gone away.

I died because I had to survive

and lost boys dont live that long

and dying felt like peace, thats what I said in the poem.

So, today, I kind of knew

That the first poem I wrote

Had to love the moment

when 15 year old me

wrote a poem.

Because today, I write a poem, about that last poem

The one in which I died

Because, today, I am alive.