How Are You? A Response No One Waits For.

 “How are you?”

It is usually asked without waiting for an answer.

This verse answers it anyway — not with feelings, but with memories we forgot we were carrying.

Funky erasers.

Kung Fu Panda stickers.

Hot Wheels cars were left untouched beside discarded draft notes.

That contrast is what gives the verse its quiet power.

Childhood and adulthood aren’t neatly separated here; they sit side by side. 

One belongs to imagination, the other to unfinished intention. 

Exhaustion lives in between — not loud, not dramatic, just heavy enough to make small things feel unnecessary.

The speaker isn’t tired of doing too much. 

They’re tired of caring about things that once mattered.

Rearranging toys, stepping outside, and even buying an apple feel like effort. 

Growing up, the verse suggests, doesn’t arrive only with responsibility — it arrives with disinterest.

Breathe in.

The verse begins collecting moments the way the mind does when it senses loss....

The smell of Play-Doh stuck under fingernails. 

Paint spilled without panic.

Laughing until breathing became difficult. 

A birthday cake was carried home after work. 

Falling asleep between parents while stories unfolded about people whose names didn’t matter.

These moments weren’t special because they were extraordinary; they were special because they were extraordinary. 

They were special because they were effortless.

The verse doesn’t ask us to return to them. 

It knows we can’t. 

Instead, it reminds us that forgetting happens quietly — and that one day, 

What remains may not be what we hoped to keep.

So it ends where it began, with something ordinary.

I’ll buy myself an apple.