I can’t stop thinking about the woman who was crushed in half in that elevator accident. Whenever I go in the elevators at work, I envision the scene in my head, as though it was a movie and I am the director. I see it from different angles, I alter the choreography of how she stepped in, whether it happened head first or feet first. I imagine myself playing her character, try to experience the panic, the fear, the pain, the shock, the crunch, and the split and tear of flesh. It never feels real, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Even though the building where it happened was just a few blocks from my office, it’s reassuring to know my building uses a different elevator company, and thus far, there have been no accidents, not even a stall.

I was waiting to cross the street tonight, and when the light turned green, I stepped off the curb. But I heard an engine revving loudly to my left, and I froze, just in time to watch a cargo van speed by in front of my face. What the fuck, I thought, he wasn’t going to stop at all. He could have killed me. But that was it, and I kept walking on.

When I think about death, I see it very separately from myself, as a foreign thing existing only in the news, in movies, in literature, or in old people, sick people—other people that have nothing to do with me. But I need to accept that it’s not really that separate, that it’s not so much inching in but have always been there, have always been everywhere.

I’m too old to believe otherwise.