What Shows

The platform was cold enough

that everyone's mood just leaked out.

The woman next to me exhaled

and I saw her whole day in that cloud:

shoulders locked, jaw tight, breath

sharp like she was angry at the air itself.

She turned away from the crowd,

pressed her face closer to the window,

and the next exhale she held longer,

like she was trying to breathe quietly

as if no one could see her thinking hard thoughts.

The train wasn't coming.

Three more minutes on the schedule, which means

ten. Maybe fifteen.

I watched her exhale again—smaller this time,

controlled. She was learning not to show.

Or maybe she always knew and just forgot

in the cold, in the pause before the train,

in the moment when everyone's guard gets thin.

The exhaust from the arriving train

mixed with hers, made a bigger cloud,

swallowed up what she'd been trying to hide.

She stepped forward and was gone.

I thought about how many things we keep inside

just because we have the practice.

How winter strips us down to the obvious

for a few seconds, and then we remember

how to be private again.

My own breath was fogging the window.

I hadn't noticed when it started.