A Little More Unknown to Each Other

We speak of weather because weather
is the only god small enough to fit
between two strangers at a bus stop,
small enough not to ask anything of us
but a nod, a murmur, a shared glance upward
at a sky neither of us actually believes in anymore.

How are you is a spell we cast
to keep the larger question sleeping,
the one with teeth, the one that would ask
what happened to your mother, your marriage,
the years you meant to use for something else.
We say fine the way you'd whisper a name
to a dog you're trying to keep from barking.

Somewhere below the parking-lot chatter
there is an ocean of things unsaid,
and every "How's it going?" is a small boat
rowed carefully across the surface of it,
never once looking down, never once letting the oar dip deep enough
to touch what's actually down there, waiting,
patient as a drowned bell.

I have stood in kitchens at parties
holding a cup of something warm,
talking about traffic, about the game, about nothing,
while the real conversation stood just behind me
in its long gray coat,
tapping its foot, checking a watch that doesn't move,
waiting for everyone to go home
so it can finally sit down
and ask me, quietly, what I am actually afraid of.

It never gets the chance.
The small talk is what fills the doorway
so that door never opens all the way,
and we all go home
a little more unknown to each other than when we arrived.