To Chiefy, A Thuggish Childhood Friend, Gunned Down Poem by Ashton Bobbitt

When I see your brown face in my head
I still think of parties in Randallstown
and the gun toting teens that
worked at Mcdonalds by day
and became thugs at night.
I stayed away from those gatherings
safe in my home like a clam.
I thought I was the colorless, stupid one
till they found your body behind
Randallstown High School, lifeless and
lying in the grass, killed by a mysterious person,
more still than you'd ever been,
and I thought how lucky to have been a clam,
how lucky to have been a poet safe in a hard familial shell.