High School Bus and a Train

Back in my high school days, you sat with me on the bus once or twice. We must have lived near enough to each other, then. That route wasn’t very long.

Quiet fellow, I can’t remember for the life of me what we talked about. Maybe nothing. Maybe we just sat in silence. I’m pretty sure you were in the same year as me. You were always so quiet, seemed so alone, you were like background scenery that no one ever noticed.

I knew your name, back then. I can’t, for the life of me, remember it now. Some 25, maybe 27 years later, your face is a blur. I think your hair was brown. I think you wore a lot of button-down shirts. I remember you in red plaid and really thick glasses.

I remember my good friend telling me about how his oldest sister’s boyfriend — now his brother-in-law, I guess it always went well for them — had to clean up the mess you left. 

One of my art teachers told me what you did. “Very sad”, she called it. “Very sad.” I forgot about you soon after, for over twenty years.

That town, I remember hearing the trains go through several times a day. When I lived with some people I knew right there in town, I got so used to the noise of the trains I stopped noticing them. 

You must have heard it coming. Did you feel anything when you heard it, or were you too far resigned to be bothered? Were you afraid, or relieved?

D. had to pick you up. Literal pieces of you, that bloody mess on the tracks. More than twice what we were then, at this age, I still don’t have the courage or conviction today that you did back then. 

Could anything have convinced you to stay? Anything at all? A new friend, made on a bus ride, maybe?

I wonder who’s thinking about you today. I wonder who else would be, if you had stuck around. Maybe no one. I wonder if you made the right choice, but it doesn’t matter now. Nothing left of you but whatever life fed from the soil that your blood nourished. 

Who were you? Who could you have been?

February 15, 2026