Unreal Birthday

[busker]

You would have been 29
but death’s hide-and-seek
and never-find took that away.
Your high school friends gathered  
“in remembrance”
and I went, hoping  to see
you again in their words
hearing instead four hours 
of self-absorbed chatter that
fell into my heart pitiless as stones
thrown at a trapped dog.
Baffled, I went home
to sleep in the house where
you died.  Laying in the dark
I imagined your ghost
pass the casement window
out of and back into the night.
Felicidades, mijo.

Unreal birthday, death’s hide and seek

and never find is the only celebration

permitted me.

Absence tracks me to my lair of words.

I peek out into the dark, imagine your ghost 

walking across the picture windows

out and back into night.

Death is no accident and you don’t come back to life

just because I think about you.

Your friends proved that beyond the reach of my hopes. 

Four hours of chatter,  terroristic talk of the living

falling into my heart pitiless as stones

thrown into an empty pond.

I kept hoping that they would say your name

and you would reappear at least for them.

They never mentioned you.

You are history to them and my bitterness

is the end of their games.

The revision is less about you, more about him.
But the original is far more raw and unforgettable. The only drawback - technically speaking - was the use of too many 'you's when simple changes in the sentence construction would have avoided that pitfall.

All of the lines below are sharp as daggers, naked as flames:

Unreal birthday

Absence tracks me to my lair of words.

walking across the picture windows
out and back into night.

Death is no accident and you don’t come back to life

pitiless as stones
thrown into an empty pond.

---

This really shouldn't be in 'Basic', IMO. It sets the bar too high for those for whom Basic is intended.