I won't pretend to know
his favorite song, where he
went on Saturday nights, what
he meant to you. I won't
pretend to know who he was
to his little boy, what he
said to you last week,
what of him you keep inside.

I won't pretend to know why.

We waited in a cold gym,
on stone walls, to know,
wrote words, held hands,
wanted answers. And they came,
through whispers, down shadowed
streets, between the rain,
on a day that should have been
about daffodils, not death.

His heart, they whispered. Just gave out.
We don't know anything more.

But I do know
this: his heart was strong
in all that mattered, gave
us more than we will ever
understand, more than would fill
the spaces between the raindrops
of a thousand storms, the emptiness
of a thousand friends, the finality
of a thousand goodbyes.

I won't pretend to know why,
but I know this -- my heart,
my world, is stronger for having known him.