“How are you?”
Here’s a hackneyed platitude
sidelined like sticky bottles of
condiments at the edges of
booths in greasy spoons – way back in February,
when they were
open,
throwaway words in the time of
meet-ups and Tinder, when
free physicality flowed
like turbid streams
coursing from their sources.
Yet during the drought,
the bromide won’t abandon its
fair-weather friends
as our touches and taps
and caresses and kisses are
evicted by locks and walls and
worry and six feet-
or two meters –
of mandated
icy space.
“How are you?”
A phrase as familiar
as crammed cafés
or yell-laden yellow schoolbuses
or sweaty discotheques,
a sanity-sustaining
semantic squeeze,
a question of concern,
of care,
of connection
softens the strange
hole of isolation.
© 2020, Adrian Slonaker
ADRIAN SLONAKER crisscrosses North America as a language professional, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net nominee. Adrian is fond of opals, owls and fire noodles. Adrian’s work has been published in WINK: Writers in the Know, Ez.P.Zine, Page & Spine and others.
The BeZine 
How are you? A question that has so much more feeling behind it now …
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Yes! I thought it a bit of brilliance, John. I’ll make sure Adrian sees your comment. / J.D.
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Thanks, PoetJanstie and Jamie! Yeah, I’ve been noticing a different tone now sometimes when I hear or ask that question. There’s more of a pause afterwards as more people think about their own answers (wondering how exactly they are doing/feeling and whether they should admit this to the speaker) and as more people also make the effort to listen to the responses. I hope that both of you are doing well (or at least as well as can be expected) and keeping safe.
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Thanks, Adrian. Yes! Doing well. Probably easier for me than others because I am homebound anyway, but I do sympathize with the constraints, the fears, and the financial fallout and I don’t think we’ll put closure on this very soon. Adrian, I’ll make sure that John sees your response. You also have a response to your last poem on The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt. Stay as safe and well as possible and poem on … / J.D.
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As well as can be expected here in rainy old outbreak England, thanks Adrian. Like Jamie, I am retired and being home is not such a great pain as for others, although, besides missing my children and grandchildren, my other ‘love’ is music and particularly a cappella singing, for which not being able to perform live is giving me withdrawal symptoms! But we are getting round it and I have absolutely no complaints at all. Just feel the pain and sometimes fear of those on the front line, God help them.
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