What Else

Was he still dating that girl?
The handsome boy with the beautiful girl?
They would walk down the hall,
and laugh and fight and hold hands.
I don't know if they were dating,
we're not friends on Facebook.

Sweaty armpits, warm forheads, 
embarrassing clothes and movements.
That's where I knew you, 
a smelly gym room.
You bumped into me 
once, playing handball, 
and I was embarrassed and remembered it.

You died. 
I found out on Facebook
where everybody wants to talk about it. 
All the comments are the same, 
but the degrees of pain
are not.

I try to picture it; 
a dark street corner, pain, red.
a hospital bed, not-quite-white sheets.
Moaning, sobbing, mother, brother, father.
Strangers.

You can't write a poem about someone really dying.
That's digusting.
But, I write and read it:
Yes, good, sounds good. 
But this is a real human,
a real life, a whole world.

Yet the words keep coming because
what else is there to do?