Mall

“Can you like, 
take me to the mall?”
While she asks, her tone is:
You will.
“Sure.” He says, before I can say “No.”
 He’s nicer than me.

I close my lids so I can 
roll my eyes in darkness.
Ugh the mall? 
The palace of products?
El centro de comerciales? 
The temple to consumerism? 

“You have to come," she continues
"Because otherwise my friends
aren’t allowed to join, 
their moms say so. But. 
You’re not allowed to be near me.”
She clarifies.

What a blessing
to have a child who wants
nothing to do with me
other than my free ride
and a semblance of 
parental supervision.
Exactly how I want to spend
my precious Saturday night.

So I find myself this evening, 
in the food court 
surrounded by a cacophony
of scraping metal chairs.
Tots wriggle and screech
teenagers laugh while staring
at glowing phone screens.
Nine competing restaurants
all serving dumplings 
or brown-glazed chicken
prep their offerings with clatters
bangs and fryolator hisses
in their respective 
shallow open-front food stalls. 

I slurp a Fanta frozen custard float,
since Orange Julius long ago left.
I watch my husband 
eat from a styrofoam clamshell
filled with Bourbon chicken.

I get deja vous, of me sitting
in this same location
— but on different chairs, 
different court configurations —
while on Open Lunch hour
in high school.

I down a Shake Shack burger 
with two hands and big bites, 
unlike the CEO of McDonalds.

Once over-full of greasy food
and saturated in discordant noise,
we push away from the 
cocktail-height table.

We then circumnavigate
the expansive floors of retail.
Somehow all vendors seem like 
the same four stores on repeat:
Athleisure
      Skincare
               Plastic tiny toys
              and Blinking electronics.

I feel a sort of nostalgia
mixed with numbness 
as I pass the many storefronts
that I have seen morph 
uncountable times 
since I first traipsed those  
halls as a toddler.

“That used to be a Burger King,” 
I sigh to my husband, 
while I point at white sheetrock
that now terminates
in a Family Lounge.

In my head I continue the tour.
There used to be a GAP here.
The desolate empty anchor
was once a Sears.

That nook in the dark used to
be a family-owned coffee shop.
It sold magnets in silver tins 
on a rotating tower.
I’d begged for a set at age three.

I recall staring up at my parents’ hips
and looking at the shiny zippers 
on my Mom's chic acid-washed
tapered ankle jeans.
I watched her tap her 
white Reebok'ed toe on the tile
while she found new ways
to say "No."

Tugging on my Mom’s hand
after both had resolutely declined,
I sulked while I contemplated
running my pudgy fingers through
the loose coffee beans,
glossy and dark, that lay in
in burlap sacked barrels that were
tantalizingly my same height.

I snap back to the present
as I smell the unmistakable 
aroma of baking pretzels.
Auntie Anne’s 
has been a constant, here.

Otherwise, seemingly 
every store is in the midst
of swapping leased sites 
within this one building:
Up to down, left to right,
Big footprint to small, 
small footage to big.
Dizzying; senseless.

I can trace the economic 
booms and busts 
through my memory.
I study the geological layers.

Each storefront door holds
holds the essence 
of an earlier time, 
a shuttered institution
a prior iteration.

“That was once a Woolworth’s”
I mumble to him as I point 
to a candle shop.
“That was a Hecht’s.”
At present, it's a Macy's.

"That was Imaginarium."
In its place: Build-a-Bear.
"Over there? Sharper Image."
Now it's a Kiehl's. 

Now in 2026,
somehow our daughter
has found a way to stay here
an hour and forty-five minutes
and still want more time.

When we finally reconnect
at the negotiated, 
extended time,
she forces out a huffed breath. 

“All we did was watch 
our one friend try on 
three pairs of jeans.
Each pair, she tried on twice!

We didn’t 
even get 
dinner. 
I’m starving.”

Ah. Familiar.
She has been initiated 
into the world of 
shopping with friends.

Retailing in packs
can be fun and dull
and calming and stressful;
a destination and a sentence.

Forgetting her frustration
she walks ahead of us 
towards the car, 
bouncing on the rubbery heels
of her new pink suede Adidas.

I observe her as she
repositions her hoodie 
which she’d tied around
her waist just-so.

She’s 
so much cooler
than I was 
at her age.

Another flashback: I had 
my first double date here, 
back in the 
late nineteen hundreds,
a few steps from this spot.

My best friend and her 
real boyfriend held hands
and nuzzled 
each others' necks.

The second boy and I, 
we were each selected as cover 
for the dating pair, to satisfy 
my friend's parental rule of No Dating.

Then, our quartet had entered a
KayBee Toys store
— today it's a sneaker shop —
to buy two cans of neon Silly String.

The girls had sprayed the guys 
and vice versa 
until mall security 
threatened to intervene.

I remember my would-be date 
sprinting away from me
in black and white
Adidas. 

I’ve been coming
to these hallowed, 
hollow grounds
for forty years.

Life repeats: every generation
a kid asks their parents
for more; strikes a bargain, or doesn't,
and then walks back to the car.

Inadvertent memories
forged and forgotten 
until the next visit 
to the local mall.