maybe he didn't want heaven.

maybe it hurt him

when you spit onto his face 

upon seeing his newly painted rainbow walls.

maybe it hurt him

when he saw the cigarette burns on his brother's collarbones

and heard you when you said 'He was never my son.'

maybe it hurt him

when the beer bottle you threw

drew lines of red against his arm.

maybe it hurt him

when you told him please don't cry,

you're acting like some stuck-up bitch. act like a man.

maybe it hurt him

when you hit his boyfriend,

the only thing he'd ever loved 

in this wretched, hopeless world.

maybe it broke him,

finding all his clothes and belongings

in a cardboard box

outside the front door.

maybe it broke him,

knocking once, twice, fifty times,

wanting just to say i love you

one last time

because he was kind enough to still love you

after all you'd done.

maybe it broke him,

slowly dying on that small suburban street,

listening

to your happy dinner conversation

as if he had never existed.

maybe it killed him

when his boyfriend left after that.

when you laughed

into the phone.

when he slept in that youth shelter,

alone

and afraid,

crying on a metal-barred bunk bed.

maybe it killed him,

everything you did,

everything you called love.

maybe he left to find heaven.

-r.i.p. freddie