What do you do when someone says 'I'm fine'?

It’s the quietest lie I know. Not dramatic, not even false—just a shape people fold themselves into when they don’t want to be seen. I’ve been listening to that word for years now, in the library, in the checkout line, on the phone. The way it lands—flat, like a book dropped on a table. I keep wondering: what if we stopped asking 'how are you?' and just said, 'tell me something true'? Not because we need answers, but because the silence after 'I’m fine' is already full of them.