When he considers uttering "the last syllable of [his] recorded time," putting out the guttering of his "brief candle," don't tell him "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is another day. He knows what Macbeth knew: "Life... is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" (pause).

Don't tell him that after he jumps from the roof of the mall parking garage he will still be alive, bleeding out like the fish he speared every weekend (pause).

Don't mention the woman who only wanted a pair of shoes to go with the dress for Saturday night and will buy him, a forever flashback, instead. Don't say how she will be left with the sounds of his agonal breathing in the rattle of bangles on her wrist (pause).

Don't tell him how she will be the mother of one of his classmates. How she won't recognize his yearbook photo because his hair will no longer be blond, styled the way she sees it, dark with impact, embodying the ground (pause).

How she will visit the principal the next day to confirm his identity: permanent truant (pause).

How the principal, who can't stop the tears swelling and receding at unexpected moments like the waves he watched from the causeway, will never forgive her administration, will quit her career; how the friends he took to school on the key, who say he was laughing and joking "like normal" that morning, won't ever find their way back home no matter how many times they are driven. Don't tell him how one of them will duplicate his act on its anniversary. How everything will be the same: Mall, garage, church, GoFundMe, ComeFindMe (pause).

Don't tell him about the student from another school who will admire him and walk from her classroom, not to the bathroom as she will tell her teacher, but into traffic (pause).

Don't tell him by disposability, he increases visibility (pause).

Don't tell him how a witness will take pictures on his iPhone and post his body, crushed like an ice cube, on Facebook, and that his youngest sister, in her bedroom with the flu, will see them even before the police show up at the house, and that his relatives will lie and tell her someone Photoshopped them (pause).

Don't tell him how the paramedics will massage his heart in the ambulance, holding it in their hands naked the way his mother held him at birth, and how his parents will cup theirs, knowing no manipulations will ever fix this, that his "walking shadow" will cast them into a darkness so solid they can't even touch each other (pause).

Don't tell him they will hire a private investigator to discover why, but they will never find the answer (pause).

Don't tell him we are all both accidents and deliberations, how we can choose to believe or disregard our epiphanies (pause).

Don't tell him how he matters more than everything else that is matter, matter changing from solid to liquid to gas, matter preserved with chemicals and fired to ash, a matter that no teacher or poet or priest could ever set to rights (pause).

Tell him (pause).


Note: Quoted phrases are from MacBeth