The mall. Or an indoor tropical rainforest. Or a music festival. Or a place for the damaged. Lunch breaks at the kiosk where they no longer ask me to update my cell phone plan or straighten my hair. Zombies using their cell phones to locate brains.
“Momma look!”
“What?!”
Babydoll children giggle in the echoing halls. Their carefree voices mixing with the harsh sighs of husbands waiting patiently. Stretched out faces glazing over as they search for the source of that delicious scent. Food mixing with candles mixing with perfumes mixing with harsh chemicals. All in good taste my dear.
“I need help”
“Mommy? MOMMY?!”
“If you find him, call me”
“Where?”
The frantic conversation of the echos. Catching snippets of the whole in my notebook net. My ears too weak to gather more than that quick phrase.
“Huh?”
“My mom made me go”
“Absolutely!”
“Huh?”
“Of Course”
“Huh?”
Catching glimpses of brightly colored hair and brightly colored strollers. Passing from fluorescent to natural light and back again. The indoors mimicking the outdoors with large windows and blown up photographs.
Crowds letting their guard down. On phones. In conversations. Not minding the listeners who walk right past.
“Now he’s saying that we should live in the same apartment complex”
“I’m, like, the only one”
But how can they be the only one, when I’ve had that same conversation? She’s just recycling my words from nine months ago. Is all our language just recycled? Are we living the same life just at different speeds? Unique apart. United together.
Infants babble. Practicing their recycled words for future performance. And the new life will just end up broken and damaged in the end. Like the plaster casts and the crutches and the wheelchairs I see wandering the mall midweek. The unemployed and the possibly unhelped. Less apparent conditions will make themselves known in time.
“I need help”
“Huh?”
“It worked last time”
“Absolutely”
False faces stare out at us from windows. Selling us fabric, and plastic bottles, and chemicals in tubes. Where do they all come from? The products and the faces that sell them? Both mass produced to continue the constant purchasing.
“I hated that!”
“That guy was mean!”
“Huh?”
“No, that’s terrible”
“Yo! I swear to god!”
“Huh?”
Mothers and fathers and babysitters chasing the toddlers through the legs of the mindless shoppers. Catch them if you can. Teach them the values they need to learn.
“Astoria! Share!”
“I wanna be over there!”
“Wait”
“Give me a big hug”
“How embarrassing”
At the end of this life, will we end up here? If “hell is other people” then isn’t this where hell is? Are you “actively dying”? “Is that for here or to go?” Could you ask me again? I’m not sure I’ve figured it out yet.
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