This one's for the gentle boy who wrestles with his pain. His easy-bruising tender heart and ever-active brain. He feels much more than others do, but then he tries to hide With laughter or bravado, the gentle boy inside. With wit and style and artifice, His secret's kept so well.  Who dreams the brave facade you see conceals some private Hell?  Meanwhile, the brutes live on and on their unexamined lives.  The low, the stupid, and the cruel, the sluggish idiot thrives to fill the world with empty talk and greed and hate and noise, to breed, carous and make life hell for all the gentle boys.  Some gentle boys grow heartsick and tired of this charade. They blow themselves right off the earth or fight then fail then fade. If you should love a gentle boy there's little you can do. If he decides his time has come, He'll leave the earth and you. He cannot see that if he goes You'll never fill that space.  You'll spend your whole life searching for that laugh, that kiss, that face.  How can the gentle boy not know you'll love him beyond death.  You'd help him any way you could, unto your dying breath. Someday when justice reigns on earth we all may greet with joy. A world where it won't hurt so much to be a gentle boy.               ~ Mary Withers, William's Mom ~