Crow and Flame

There are people I pass every day like ghosts brushing through fog.

The woman beside me in the grocery store, comparing bruised peaches beneath fluorescent light.
The man whose shoulder touched mine in the hospital hallway while machines hummed behind closed doors.
The stranger sitting across from me in the waiting room, twisting their wedding ring over and over again.
The colleague laughing too loudly at work.
My boss asking if I’m doing okay in the middle of a meeting while everyone nods and pretends exhaustion is professionalism.

Surface-level exchanges.
Polite smiles.
“How are you?”
“Good. Busy.”
“Same.”

We move past one another carrying entire oceans behind our ribs.

And sometimes I wonder if they can see it — the grief stitched quietly into my posture, the exhaustion hidden beneath practiced smiles, the ache I tuck behind casual conversation like contraband.

I wonder if they hear the things I am not saying.

The pauses.
The deflections.
The almost-confessions.

I wonder, too, what I am missing in them.

How many people have I mistaken for fine simply because they were functional?
How many are surviving silently beside me while the world keeps demanding small talk and productivity and composure?

We are taught to wear masks so well that eventually we forget they are masks at all.

But every now and then, something slips through.

A trembling hand.
Eyes that linger a second too long.
A sigh heavy enough to tell the truth all by itself.

And I think maybe most of us are standing in the same fire, pretending not to smell the smoke on each other’s clothes.

So maybe the holiest thing we can do is ask.

Not the rehearsed version.
Not the passing greeting thrown into crowded hallways.

But the real question.

Are you okay?
Are you carrying too much?
Do you need someone to sit beside you in the dark awhile?

And maybe they will lie at first.
Maybe we do too.

But I ask anyway.

I remind people I love them just in case.
Just in case this was the day they needed to hear it.
Just in case they were beginning to believe they were invisible.
Just in case the mask had grown too heavy to hold alone.

Because the truth is that we are all haunted by things we do not say aloud.
And sometimes kindness is simply recognizing the ghost in someone else
because you have met your own.