Everyone Is Fighting Something

She sat there with the coffee cupped in both hands as if it were the last warm thing in the world.

Her eyes lowered not to a phone or a message or any small bright distraction, but to the gravity of her thoughts. People gathered and voices rose and chairs scraped the pavement, yet she stayed, still as a doe in the woods, as if something heavy had settled in her chest and decided to remain.

I wondered what news had found her, what leaving had been done to her, what future had leaned too close and whispered its threat. I almost approached her to ask if she was okay, then didn’t.

We pass each other like this every day, carrying verdicts and losses and private angst, and sometimes if we slow enough to look we catch a glimpse of the weight, and it tells us what we already know and rarely admit, that everyone is fighting something.

And one day the storm will find us.