For Sam
The thing about death is this. Sometimes you're standing on a subway platform, or walking down a supermarket aisle, or ordering your lunch from a deli counter when you see someone and think, "Oh, I know that person..." and then suddenly you think, "No, wait, that can't be him. He's dead. This is someone else." It doesn't happen all the time. It's not an overwhelming burden, weighing heavily on your shoulders, because honestly you didn't know him that well to begin with and you barely spoke to him. But you knew who he was, and recognized his face, and sat three rows down from him in one class, or ate at the same table as him once, so sometimes you think you see him walking down the street and for a second he's alive and fine.
And then you remember and he's dead again and has been for months and you don't really know what to think about that because you didn't really know him that well to begin with.
All those other people, they knew him. They took the time, while he was still alive, to tag him in their Facebook photos, the ones they took at all those bar hopping nights that you never went to because you are just that awkward. They know how to react because there are basic rules you're given when one of your friends die, basic rules that don't apply to you because you didn't really know him that well to begin with. You're not really allowed to cry, because your mother will yell at you for being melodramatic since he wasn't really your friend. And you don't even attend his memorial because his friends are there and you don't know how to feel and anyway you had work and studying that day.
But it doesn't matter anyway, because knowing him or not knowing him in life, going to the memorial or skipping it, having twenty photos of him or none won't change the fact that occasionally you see his face while walking to school in the morning and that must mean he's a ghost and you don't know why you, of all people, are being haunted.
And then you remember and he's dead again and has been for months and you don't really know what to think about that because you didn't really know him that well to begin with.
All those other people, they knew him. They took the time, while he was still alive, to tag him in their Facebook photos, the ones they took at all those bar hopping nights that you never went to because you are just that awkward. They know how to react because there are basic rules you're given when one of your friends die, basic rules that don't apply to you because you didn't really know him that well to begin with. You're not really allowed to cry, because your mother will yell at you for being melodramatic since he wasn't really your friend. And you don't even attend his memorial because his friends are there and you don't know how to feel and anyway you had work and studying that day.
But it doesn't matter anyway, because knowing him or not knowing him in life, going to the memorial or skipping it, having twenty photos of him or none won't change the fact that occasionally you see his face while walking to school in the morning and that must mean he's a ghost and you don't know why you, of all people, are being haunted.