i'm getting to that age where kids i used to know start making the local news.
and not for anything funny, either.
it reminds me of when my brother would talk about his former classmates, dead or imprisoned.
hitting that part of adult life i guess.
less "look at who got arrested for stealing a golf cart" and more "so-and-so died in a car wreck."
. . .
"you knew them, right?"

kindofbutnotreally.

as much as you can know anyone who you had barely spoken to but saw everyday.
just faint memories of something funny said in class over half a decade ago.
i only knew them the way you see bruises on the side of a head & a sister who lost her brother.
the way rubberneckers know flashing lights & the vague shape of body bags.
this moment replaces old ones. what i'll remember them for. what mothers will try to forget.
i don't pretend to be close—thatsnotmystyle—but it's a bit surreal when the image you have of someone in your head is from when you were fourteen. the image that will forever be fourteen.
that's a kid who died on that freeway. they were kids. 
and now they're not.

. . .
"hey, you alright?"

"yeah, what's up?"

i'm sitting here making their tragedy about me and my fear of mortality. 
the unease of what you have known to be true changing ever so slightly.
suddenly, the earth's tilt is one degree off.

"i mean... i heard about what happened."
 

...the other day i remembered when i ran into their cousin at a jimmy eat world concert.
i thought i saw michael on the train this morning.
i couldn't look away.
 

"yeah. i didn't really know them. it's unfortunate."

-abby