The first line does most of the poem's work: "That afternoon my heart stopped when yours did." It never says how the person died, and it never uses the word "died" at all. Grief arrives as a shared stopping, two hearts in one sentence, and the body responds before the mind can make sense of anything. The speaker "couldn't breath" and the tears "started," as though they began on their own. The rest of the poem circles back to this idea of loss as something physical, a gap in the body as much as in the day.
The poem speaks directly to the person who is gone, and "you" runs through every line. The title, "Ares," is the only place where a name might appear. It reads like a name or nickname, though that is an inference. Ares is also the Greek god of war, but nothing in the text picks up that myth, and the tone is tender, not warlike.
There is no rhyme and no regular rhythm. The lines are free verse, close to speech or a diary entry, and they lengthen as feeling builds. The opening is short and level, but the fifth line pours out in one breath: "but when I think I'm never going to see you on the sidewalk or at school, my heart breaks all over again and wish this was all a bad dream." It has one comma, no full stop, and a missing "I" before "wish." Elsewhere "no ones" lacks its apostrophe. These rough edges make the poem sound unpolished and immediate, as though it were written while the feeling was still raw. That roughness is part of its honesty.
The third and fourth lines hold the poem's turning point. "It was no ones fault and we shouldn't be sad / because you wouldn't want us to be" sounds like the comforting things people say after a death, and the shift to "we" suggests a wider circle of mourners. The speaker tries these phrases on, then drops them with a single word: "but." Before it comes consolation, and after it comes what the speaker actually feels. The poem is honest enough to admit that the comforting words don't work.
The imagery is small and everyday. The speaker doesn't picture a grand farewell. They picture the "sidewalk," "school," a hug, telling someone "how pretty you look," asking "how your day is." The wish is to "run into" the friend, a phrase that suggests a chance meeting and not a planned one. Loss here is measured in lost ordinary moments, which the poem suggests is where it hurts most. The place names also hint that the two people shared daily surroundings.
One line shifts into the language of tribute: "You were a beautiful human being and you made your mark on this world." It is more formal and more like a memorial speech than anything else in the poem. The next sentence returns to precision: "June 5th, 2017 was the day you left." The same date sits beneath the title, so the poem is pinned to that day like a mark on a calendar. The word "left" is another gentle substitution for death. It also echoes the opening heart image, because the person "took a piece of everyone with you." One stopped heart has become many hearts, each missing something.
The last line is the most striking: "I hope you're doing well homie." The slang drops the eulogy voice and speaks the way the speaker presumably spoke to their friend. The present tense treats the friend as someone who has simply moved away, and the poem ends with no full stop, as if the conversation isn't finished. The casualness is where the ache is sharpest.
The poem is significant for what it doesn't do. It doesn't polish grief into something elegant or explain it. It mixes borrowed comfort with private longing, formal praise with slang, and the large fact of death with the small facts of a hug and a hello. That makes it a clear example of how plain words, carefully placed, can carry real feeling.