By Moses 
We’re in the classroom 🏫 and the air feels bruised 💔. Someone wrecked the memorial in the hallway—candles tipped, petals crushed, the photo smeared 🕯️🌼🖼️. What people do to others is beyond understanding. Not respecting the deceased 🕊️, not respecting belief 🙏, not respecting space ⛔.
Boy King Tut Spark 👑 watches the chalk dust drift like tiny comets ✨. On his wrist: Everyday is a lesson. Beneath it he adds, Guard the lesson when others won’t. Our teacher—earrings like tiny scales ⚖️—pulls down the Nile map 🗺️ and writes MAAT in careful capitals. Order. Truth. Balance. A feather meets a heart 🪶❤️; a hallway meets our promise.
The memorial is for a freshman whose spark was taken early by terror and hate 🕯️😔. They were the kind who returned pencils ✏️, who said “you first” at doors 🚪. Now their corner looks like a question the school has been answering badly.
“What happens when you disturb a spark?” the teacher asks. The room becomes a listening bowl 🥣👂.
Spark stands—not a monarch, just a kid with a crown of curls and careful eyes 👦🏽👑. He draws a feather beside MAAT 🪶 and says, “Forty-two.” Legends speak of forty-two ideals—ways to live so your heart stays light. Let’s gather ours: not I have not ❌, but I will ✅.
The girl by the window 🌤️ braids blue thread in her hair and begins: “I will respect the space where grief needs room.” 📏🧘 Dante adds: “I will not turn a memorial into a stage.” 🎭🚫 Kia: “I will learn what comforts someone else, even when it doesn’t comfort me.” 🤝💙 The chalk keeps time like a soft drum 🥁. The board fills:
“I will not make humor out of holy.” 🙅♀️🛐
“I will not steal quiet from another’s silence.” 🤫💬🚫
“I will ask before I help.” ❓🫶
“I will leave offerings, not signatures.” 🕯️➡️✍️🚫
“I will move slowly near grief.” 🐢💗
By the time we speak our way to forty-two, the room has cooled two degrees 🌬️. We read the vows aloud—not slogans, but starter cables for the heart 🔌❤️. The teacher underlines three words—space, belief, deceased—so they stop being abstract and start being neighbors 🏘️.
Then we pick up tape, a rag, and careful hands 🩹🧽🤲. The custodian meets us with a broom 🧹 and a nod; respect doesn’t need paragraphs. The librarian arrives with tea lights 🕯️📚. The dance crew brings a small speaker 🎶. For once the principal’s email sounds like a request, not a gavel 📧🤝.
We right the photo, wipe away prints, sweep shards into a paper cup 🧻. We rearrange flowers so tired stems can lean on new ones 🌼➡️🌼. Spark sets a gull feather between two jars 🪶🫙🫙—thin as breath, stubborn as hope. On a sticky note he writes: What people do is beyond understanding; what we do next is not. 📝➡️🛠️
Behind us, a rumor hunts for a mouth 🗣️👀. Somebody names names. Spark holds his tongue 🤐. Gossip is a cheap altar—burns hot, leaves you cold 🔥🪙🥶. The teacher adds: Justice is balance without humiliation ⚖️🛡️.
Fourth period, an elder from the neighborhood arrives—a rooftop beekeeper 🐝🏙️. “When you open a hive,” she says, “move slowly and keep your hands visible. Leave enough honey for the bees first. Don’t take what they need to live.” 🍯✋ Grief is a hive. Belief is a hive. The space around the dead is a hive. Bring gentle smoke when fear is stinging the air 🌫️. Give time before you take opinions ⏳🧠.
We add to our list:
“I will not harvest what isn’t mine.” 🌾🚫
“I will learn the language of another’s rites without turning it into costume.” 📖🛐🎭🚫
“I will carry water.” 💧
“I will carry silence.” 🤫
“I will carry on—carefully.” 🧭
After school we keep watch in pairs—not guards, not judges, companions to a flame 👀🕯️👫. The memorial breathes whenever the doors open 🌬️; we shield candles with glass jars 🫙. We learn which songs belong here and which belong on the court 🎵🏀. We practice saying, “This is a resting place,” without apology 🛑🛏️. People slow down. The freshman’s brother brings a thermos ☕ and pours two cups—one for us, one for the air, as if the air can drink 🌫️.
What happens when you disturb a spark taken early by terror and hate?
1️⃣ The drafts reveal the cracks 🌬️🔎.
2️⃣ The willing hands step forward to seal them 🧱🤲.
3️⃣ The light multiplies anyway, stubborn and instructive 🕯️➕🕯️➕🕯️.
Days pass 🗓️. The forty-two vows become habits 💪. We say excuse me to the name 🙇. We say thank you to the quiet 🙏🤫. We refill the flowers before they faint 🌼💧. The chalk feather flakes yet remains readable 🪶—a tiny map of mercy.
History class turns to the golden mask 👑✨. Caption: King. Margin: Boy. Spark looks from mask to hallway and back ↔️. “Titles matter less than duties,” he writes 📝. We fold little boats from graph paper ⛵📈. The teacher says the ancients set boats in tombs so no one would strand the traveler on the far shore 🌊. We slide our boats beneath the picture—ferries for memory ⛵🧠.
We do not finish grief ⌛; we practice it 🧘. We do not perfect respect 🧼; we maintain it 🧺. We do not conjure understanding out of thin air 🌫️; we build a bridge with forty-two boards and cross it one careful step at a time 🪵🪵🪵🌉👣. Monday: the chalk feather smudges a little more 🪶🖐️. Tuesday: the custodian leaves a box of tea lights by the office door, just because 📦🕯️. Wednesday: the beekeeper returns with a jar of honey. “Taste what patience makes,” she says 🍯🙂.
“Everyday is a lesson,” Spark writes on his wrist ✍️. Then adds, “The lesson is a life.” 🌱 When we guard it, we honor Maat in modern shoes ⚖️👟.
We are in the classroom and we are witnessing 🏫👀. The desk lamp is ordinary 💡, but the way we share it is not 🤝. Inside each chest, a scale remembers its work ⚖️. The feather waits, gentle and exact 🪶. We breathe 🫁. We begin again 🔁.
You are not going anywhere primitive human. -Boy King Tut
Gilgamesh already told you back in the “90’s” didn’t you get the memo?