Some losses arrive like a premature endgame,

A sudden silence falling where the rooks and bishops play.

Not because the final sleep is a stranger to our door,

But because the morning ended long before the soaring roar.

Hawi Kaloki was a blossom in the spring,

Too young for final chapters, or a quieted string.

We tally up the ratings, the trophies won and claimed,

As if a human spirit can be tracked, and scored, and named.

The Measure of a Life

A rating cannot capture how a soul would softly glow,

A trophy cannot measure all the seeds he helped to sow.

What aches within the marrow is the future left unspun—

The tournaments unplayed, the uncompleted run,

The younger child who looks across a checkered, silent square,

And whispers, “I am playing because Hawi once sat there.”

“He is wise who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” — Epictetus