This poem is widely purported to have been written by a 15-year-old boy two years before he ended his life:

Once on a yellow paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
and he called it “chops” because that
was the name of his dog
and that’s what it was all about
and his teacher gave him an “A” and
a gold star
and his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to all his aunties
that was the year father tracy took
all the kids to the zoo and let them
sing on the bus
and that was the year his baby sister
was born with tiny toenails and no hair
and his mother and father kissed a lot
and the girl around the corner sent
him a valentine signed with a row of x’s
and his father always tucked him
in bed at night
and was always there to do it.

Once on a white paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
and he called it “autumn” because
that was the name of the season
and that’s what it was all about
and his teacher gave him an “A” and
told him to write more clearly
and his mother never hung it on
the kitchen door because it had just
been painted
and the other kids told him that
father tracy smoked cigars and left
the butts in the pews
and that was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
and the girl around the corner laughed
at him when he went to see Santa Claus
at Macy’s
and the kids told him why his
mother and father kissed a lot
and his father never tucked him in
bed at night and he got mad when
he got mad and cried for him to do it.

Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
and he called it “question marked
innocense” because that was the name
of his girl
and his professor gave him an “A” and
a strange and steady look
and his mother never hung it on
the kitchen door because he never
showed it to her
that was the year father tracy died
and he forgot how the end of the
“apostles creed” went
and he caught his sister necking on
the back porch
and his mother and father never
kissed anymore or even talked
and the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup and made
him cough when he kissed her, but he
kissed her anyway
and at 3 a.m. he tucked himself in bed,
his father snoring soundly.

That’s why on the back of a pack of
matches he wrote another poem
and he called it “absolutely nothing”
because that’s what it was about
and he gave himself an “A”
and a slash on each damp wrist
and he hung it on the bathroom door
because he couldn’t reach the kitchen.

The earliest publication I can find attributes it to a Cathy Curtis, a 12-year-old student at the Abbot Academy, a girls’ boarding school in Andover, Mass., whose literary magazine published the poem in June 1971. The school closed the following year. I haven’t been able to learn anything more about Curtis.