Elegy for the Boy Who Wore a Crown of Flowers by Aigerim Bibol

After Dead Poets Society (1989)

I thought silence would crack 

open like stone, spill out the words 

lodged in my throat. If I could 

speak, I’d tell you how the sky 

folded into a tight fist that night.

How light flattened against the 

windows & refused to enter. 

How I folded too. 

You once taught me that even 

a whisper could split a room 

in two. But you never whispered, 

not really. You threw yourself 

at the world with such force it 

splintered at the edges. The road 

not taken is paved with ash from 

cigarette butts & burnt scripts, 

footprints smudged into soot.

My feet lead me back to the lake 

where we skipped stones over 

ice, each crack spreading like veins 

under glass. Laughter bounced 

against snow-covered pines. 

The Vermont winter howls 

its indifference, bleeds white into 

gray—memories that never thaw.

You had this way of looking 

at me like I was nothing more 

than a collection of soft parts—

easier to bruise than love.

Now, your absence is the air 

I breathe, an ache so precise 

it feels holy. I fill my lungs 

with verse. Let it carve me hollow,

let it christen me coward. 

I wanted to hold you the way you held 

that damn crown—like it was built 

for your hands, even when the weight 

bent your wrists. I wanted to shout 

your name like a blade, to cut through 

whatever it was that swallowed you whole.

I wanted to ask if it was worth it—

if the drop felt like flying

or if it was just a faster way to break.