Cracking the Shell

I hold my breath and turn the key,

The lock clicks to the dead room.

Inside, the air hangs waiting

For a draught of light. I open curtains,

Allow his room to see itself.

His family tiptoes in,

I unlock the sashes, crack

The shell sealed around too soon a death.

We breathe the air that rushes in

To chase the space and play again

With the schoolbooks on the table,

On the shelves, stirring now his scent

That lingers in the shirt, blazer, pants

And tie that were his school uniform.

Pasted posters of Titanic,

Celine Dion and other favourites,

Bicycle wheel rims in Olympic

Formation that nursed a quiet ambition

A pandemonium of questions

Queues for answers in the silence,

Anger tight in the chins and fingers

Of his brothers who struggle to believe

That the driver’s pain will never die.

They feel the chill of a callous world

That cut their brother short of this day,

His seventeenth birthday, the day

They hoped their rage might take a rest.

I pour my knowledge on their hell,

That his place in heaven is alive

In the joy of his winning smile.

The walls listen to the whispers

That murmur in his memory.