"More than a stunning debut. It is the announcement of a bold new literary voice"
—Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The last time I saw you I was too young to even walk. The only memories I have of you are from pictures taken long ago. In one you sit on the couch smiling next to my dad, you both have guitars in your lap and you look so happy. Looking at you there with my dad who was so young its so hard to believe that you’d want to kill yourself. But you did and now I’ll never have the chance to see you and my dad will forever have to suffer the loss of his dad. He misses yo like crazy you know. Sometimes he will sit in his room and play that song, the one he wrote about lost time, and cry. Its hard to understand why you’d want to leave all that behind but at the same time its not so hard. My dad says you got caught up in things you shouldn’t have and to escape the pain you turned to alcohol and drugs. You would sit in solitary and take all your anger out on your guitar for hours and when you came out you’d stare at the TV and try to block out the world. I get that you had many problems but you still had so many people who loved you. At every family reunion my family always tells my dad much they miss you. I went to visit you at the funeral. Before that day I had never seen my dad actually cry but as we sat there staring at the bronze plaque shoved in the dirt, I saw tears dropping off my fathers face. It was strange that the only thing I could do to
honor you was bring a few red flowers and drop them above where you laid. That’s another thing that was strange to me. You had once walked around and do things like I