I go to college most days - I'm not one to skip. On my walk home, an older man works on his garden most days. He is not one to skip. I record voice notes to my friends as I walk home, and I've always wondered if he's in close enough vicinity to hear me speak. Does he think much of me? Does he expect me to pass his house around 3 pm everyday? Does he view me as another teenager wondering by, always on their phone, who can't just enjoy a walk. I could say I'll never know, but I could if I wanted to. I could stop one day to talk to him. I've never been the type to approach complete strangers, but I could. It could even go well, maybe I'd be over for dinner a few weeks later.

If he stops caring for his garden when I walk home, I will notice. I will wonder why he stopped - Did he move, is he too frail to do it anymore, did he switch the time, is it just that the weather is bad? I may even miss him, in the way that you consciously notice someones absence, even if you didn't necessarily care for them. These types of relationships - liminal, they definitely exist, but in much more confined spaces than we typically think of as a relationship.

For about a year and a half, I rode the bus nearly everyday. My family didn't have a car, and my college was out of walking distance. There are many people I recognize from the bus. A girl from a large highschool who had a mushroom backpack - My sister and I both noticed her, saying seperately we'd thought about talking to her. A guy from a school I attended quite briefly with a quite attractive face. When he dyed his hair a dark blue, I posted about it online and to my surprise, a friend of mine had also seen him before; We talked for a few moments about his cool outfits. A girl who road the bus at a peculiar time, and always stopped at the library. She looked quite young but the timing was so weird I couldn't imagine what in the world she'd be doing on the bus if she was school aged. I thought surely, she must work at the shopping center near the library. I switched routes and haven't seen her since.

There was a girl, her boyfriend & a friend of there's who always got on at my sister's highschool. I first took note of her since we had the same plush keychain on our backpacks, and because she was quite pretty. I saw her everyday on the bus for a few months. Once when she wasn't on the bus, I saw her and her friends standing at a stoplight. It was strange to see someone I can so easily recognize, outside of our usual context, and I don't even know their names. But I knew her.

I dont remember the name of the girl I sat next to for a quarter in art class, but I definitely knew her. She was from Ethiopia, and didn't speak much English. At the beginning of the quarter, I chose my seat by her thinking she was pretty, and didn't realize the reason she was so quiet. We worked well together, always sharing paint. If she mixed too much of a colour, she'd offer it to me. Eventually we started saying goodbye at the end of class and I'd hold the door for her (or vice versa). I don't think we ever said eachothers names correctly because I had only heard it said by my teacher twice, and the same for my name to her. I would likely not have ever known her otherwise - she wasn't placed in normal classes due to the language barrier, she was only in art since it had very little instruction. Even if I had