Work Text:
Dear Neil:
I'm so sorry, I'm sorry that to acquire your voice you had to go through all that, I'm so sorry. You see. Little Neil, maybe you were meant to be a dead poet, maybe you were meant to perform for a kinder audience, maybe you were meant to live instead of die.
But that's something we will never know. Because you took your life that December, just before Christmas, and left this feeling in my chest so close to despair.
I'm sorry that no one was there for you at the time you needed it most, sorry that you didn't listen, sorry that an outburst of grief took away your chance to live as you did in the poems you wrote about. Pain can become that little push into the abyss from which you cannot escape, because when you enter then there is nothing else, no more people, no more feelings, nothing, there is nothing anymore; you can't help yourself and you can't let yourself be helped by those who love you, there is nothing but pain and more pain.
Weren't you too young for that? You were so young that you couldn't even fall in love, so young that you never saw Todd talk about his poem, so young that you didn't get to know that you had been valedictorian of your high school. You were so young that it is painful to write this.
You had to live, you had to live, death was not your destiny, your destiny was to perform in front of people who would cheer and love you, your destiny was to love someone and let yourself be loved, your destiny was to find a family, your destiny was different.
It could have been different.
You should not have died.
At least not like this.
"We accept the love we think we deserve."
And you deserved the greatest love this world had ever seen.
Oh Niel, this really should have been different. Did it hurt? Were you scared? Were you trembling? You shouldn't have done it alone, you weren't alone, maybe, your worst problem was the one that killed you. Not trusting your friends. Oh Niel if only you had said a word, if only you had spoken up, if only you hadn't kept it all to yourself, maybe we would be in such a different situation, so different that it hurts to imagine what could have been and never was.
You were not alone.
You did not live alone and you will not die alone either.
For inside that beautiful black coffin, which mocks us the living by taking away those we love, you took our hearts, a part of the soul that will never forget you; you took our tears, you took our joy, you took my voice and you took my memories of you, you hid them in your coat pocket and you took them away never to return. We will never be the same again, we will never smile like we did when you were alive, and maybe we will never feel the same way.
But that's okay.
It's okay if it means that at least I'll be able to remember you, the emptiness in my heart will remind me of the times we were together, the times you laughed and the times you cried, and if that means that at least you won't be alone in death then you can take it all with you.
Neil, maybe your biggest mistake was not finding your voice in time, and maybe mine was not being able to do anything to get my voice to you.
-Todd.