Yo happy birthday dude! I have no idea how old you are. In fact, I never knew how old you were. All I knew was that you were big and cool. Like tall and muscly and mature and everything that I wanted to be. The privileges, the status, the good looks, and the fireworks that you got to play with and I didn’t cuz I was too damn young. All of that was all that I saw because that is all there was and now that is all that’s left. I don’t remember much of it honestly but why did you leave so soon man? We should have made memories that I could actually remember instead of painting a stupid foggy morning in my 8-year-old head. U still had to teach me how to spin a basketball on my fingers and let me ride my bike on the ramp you have leading up to your home, your soul, your being and your existence. I’m starting to forget your face. I think you had a goatee or something weird like that. Whatever it was I thought it was cool at the time. Times change and people change. Times don’t change and people stay the same. Well, the times have changed but you are the same. Buried by the main road near the lame tree leaving us with just your first and last name. I didn’t even attend ur goddam funeral cuz time kept me busy. It kept me going, it kept me striving. Or was it just slowly killing me? Reminding me that one day you will teach me how to spin a basketball on my fingers. I hate basketball now by the way. Not everybody is as good at it as you. Do they celebrate birthdays in heaven? I don’t know. I haven’t really understood anything I read in the Quran. It sounds so wrong coming outta false mouths looking for false benefits and salvation while putting up with the damnation of the racist world we live in, live on, and die under. It’s filled with shooters and hooters who act like they have never seen a pretty girl before while they steal her soul and bury her by the road. The same people who keep splitting nations to create absolutions, indignations. They wanna define each man and woman by the machine of their soul. Well, ur machine is already rusting somewhere under the ground. The ground that you were supposed to play monkey in the middle with me on with the new frisbee that I bought cuz the toy shop stopped selling soccer balls. Due to the fact that the country we lived in got involved in brawls with politics, religion, rape, and molestation. They don’t care about no soccer balls. People make things so complicated. It’s kinda stupid to talk with you if you're not gonna say anything back. Sorry, I just wanna hear your voice cuz I don’t know what it sounds like anymore. I see ur face in pictures and try to imagine the creation of the vibrations of your vocal cords like I do with my favourite songs. There’s this new singer named Shawn. I never tell my friends that I listen to his music cuz I know they would just lose it. I mean I only listened to like one or two of his songs. Well, maybe 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 but it’s not too late to turn back to some good old Kendrick Lamar. Sorry, I know you don’t know any of these people. You don’t know these stories. I hate how you gave me this story. The details are burned into my skull like the devil’s choir of death. I remember after you left. My mom went to your house. She didn’t even cry, she just talked to your mom about how you were taken too soon and all of that cliche BS that I have seen her do at every funeral. But this time, she was broken and losing function. The air around her became the suction of her tears and the white hair on her head started to fall melting into the Niagra Falls cuz that’s where we were when we got the news of your awakening. It came in like a wet blanket of tears waterboarding my nose my mouth and at that moment I didn’t have a single doubt about my mortality and my life and my growing body. I knew that one day I would also be buried by the same lame tree near the same main road leaving behind a rotting pile of grief that would only be visible in the eyes of my mother and the silence of my brother and the Malboro cigarette packets of my father. If you can die then I can die too I’m sure. You even left your baby boy alone in this world, he was only four. Did you know we moved to Canada? Man nobody here has a goatee. In fact, people who have goatees are either living in a crappy basement or in a jail cell. Just kidding, some are listening to the sounds of Heaven’s bells.