I had a dream last night that you and I were at a strip mall.
It was kinda small and remote, between towns.
We were looking for a house to buy, getting hungry,
and I’d been complaining about that letter I’d decided to write,
so you were being patient with me as usual (either that,
or you were just tuning me out) when we pulled over
at civilization in front of a place called Ro’s Bakes and Bookery.
“Ro” was short for Rowena, we’d find. The counter
hosting the register had a window behind it
looking into a kitchen with a chalkboard crown
bedazzled in bold calligraphies that listed a variety
of cookies and simple syrups for Italian sodas and quaint espressos.
To the right, there was a fire-pitted seating space
and that chair from the Wangs’ old house—
that one we once both slept in, plaid and oversized.
It’d been duplicated, too! Chairs were everywhere,
and on their side tables were samples of homemade
licorice and chocolate. There were licorice and chocolate
cookies, yes, but there was also just licorice and chocolate.
I went ham on the licorice; you on the chocolate.
It was like that free bread at (pick a restaurant):
she’d come out with more of it in baskets,
cracking passive-aggressive jokes through a plastered smile,
and we’d just look at each other and laugh,
because she was nice otherwise, and we’re people-pleasers
(well, you less so, but admit it: sometimes you are), and it was cool
that there weren’t any decorations anywhere; just books,
floor to ceiling. We wanted to stay! She had them all, she claimed.
She owned the whole strip mall, so that made it more
believable: room after room after room of books
linked by back hallways. They never seemed to end
when she showed us. I remember closets with tunnels
and gravitational shifts, then after some minutes it was like
that was all normal. We talked about food, hobbies, Life …
You mentioned painting. I mentioned writing. She mentioned
something about something vague, or something, before remembering
the rose on her sign out front needed refreshing still,
and it had to be done between recollections before the next rain.
She kept putting it off, then she’d forget! She only remembered
because of what you’d said: “Funny how things spark like that.”
You offered to do it, naturally: “It’s just tracing over what’s there
with a new coat, right?” It didn’t feel like we were patrons—
we were with family! She had one of those magnets of
a spirit that draws people in, you know? But she also repelled …
There was a station wagon I forgot to mention:
it was pulling out when we were pulling in, erratic, frantic.
And when you started painting, that same car came speeding up
to a stop next to ours, then some stuttering stranger got out,
walked in, and you followed right behind him with imaginary popcorn.
He heaved and pointed, first at himself, his throat, and then at Ro,
but she just stood there. It was odd. I wanted to offer
my help, but she withheld hers with so much confidence.
I was sensing a lot of subtext. He quit trying to speak,
took out his wallet, rummaged for a twenty, and threw it to the ground
before speeding off (and for good that time), cursing at us loudly.
He chipped our paint, your paint, when his tires spat gravel
back towards us. I asked Ro if she knew what that was about,
and she said he used to come around there with his daughter,
until she died in a car wreck down the road …
It was a Dead-Man’s-Curve-type situation I gathered,
and for whatever reason, the man had snapped and he blamed her—
he blamed Ro! “He would always take, take, take, too,” she said.
“Real stingy, as if the free things were really free,
and getting petty would bring his daughter back,”
before quipping, “Can’t change the past!” She dealt lots of
cliches, blessed lots of hearts, and she wanted those blessings in return …
Every so often, I’d be sweeping and laughing, and talking
and laughing, and sorting and snacking on free licorice
while putting all those books away, when I’d get dizzy
and the room would then fill with a soap opera haze.
I thought I was just dehydrated the first time,
because Ro had disappeared then rematerialized
with water, and it was the clearest water I’d ever had!
She offered me “a piece of licorice, too,” handing me the basket,
and I indulged as she smiled from her chair.
Then while we’d work, she’d dust the same spot
on whatever table she was nearest, and it was so funny—
we would just laugh! We would work and laugh,
and eat and laugh, room after room after room,
just laughing. We didn’t even mind our tasks, you and I.
The second time was similar: a grey mist had clouded my peripherals,
then I got a feeling like I was being watched, but there was also a vacancy,
and when I turned around, there was some man (never seen him before)
chained to one of the shelves. Then cut to me laughing again,
broom in hand, sweeping up the lobby. My stomach had turned, though:
the jump was jarring. I thought I’d been working in a different room,
but Ro suggested I just needed food, or at least
some water, so I drank up, got back to work, and laughed
and laughed and laughed and laughed. The third time,
I was busy alphabetizing and laughing myself gay
when a book I’d already put away was back in my pile,
and it wasn’t funny. I turned my hips to check its spot
in the bookcase behind me when the body of that man
appeared hanging from a hook, and then
it was all books again. I felt sick, my sweat all saccharine.
I needed a bathroom, but I didn’t even know where a bathroom was.
I went to the hall, and it began elongating
until I forgot what I was even looking for …
All I had was this sense of urgency without a reason.
I turned a random knob and walked into the lobby.
You were in there laughing and working while Ro did nothing
but offer me more water because I looked like I’d “just seen a ghost.”
This time was different, though: I told her, “No,” then I looked at you
and said, “We need to go,” but you insisted on knowing why,
so I reminded you about “that thing we were getting late for,”
unaware that by then it’d already been weeks, and Ro knew exactly
what I was doing. Your face said you maybe-sorta remembered,
so you dropped your broom, and we walked the short distance back
to the car, drove off thankful, then sat in silence for a quarter of a mile,
when the road started bending with a house just beyond it, which I could see,
but you weren’t stopping. I pointed ahead and tried to shout,
but it was like my tongue was being pulled by magnets,
and my lips had been stung by scorpions and bees …
You broke your daze and looked over at me (finally),
then looked back and suddenly you could see! You slammed on the brakes.
By then we were hyperventilating, you and I both, and I said
to turn around, clear as rain, and right away you did—
you didn’t even question it! You just did it; and when
we got back to Ro’s old place, it was somehow different …
The sign had gone dull again, the place was decrepit, and I dropped my jaw
when I checked the door to see if the inside was empty,
because empty it was, all except for a stool with a basket of licorice on it
in front of a giant gold-rimmed mirror. I grabbed my wallet,
threw money to the ground, thinking about what the first guy did,
then I heard a sound. It was all of us laughing, like she was justifying
holding us captive! “As if the free things were really free,” she’d said,
when she never gave us the chance to order anything! We were just there,
waiting, sampling, forgetting, and working, under some spell …
Then when I woke up, I could still hear her laughing.
Stop! Don’t tell me you had the exact same dream …

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Laura Peet during our annual fundraiser.]