Mall Mentality

People wander just like eyes
across the shopping mall,
around the giant tree with glass
and lights you could see yourself in.
It makes a good case for the idea
that decorations shape the world.
What kind of place could we make
if we rearranged the things
hung on the walls?

She spills her thoughts on a stranger
that didn’t look like they had anyone to talk to.
This was an occasional hobby,
finding out if people really were
afraid of everyone, or if they had in them
the capacity to hear people
and have people hear them back.

A homemade bomb goes off inside
one of the stores, buried under shoe boxes
and tags that had been pulled from stubborn
fabric. It shattered every skylight all at once.
The raining glass cut open several people,
and the fire spread through every single store.
This way of life hollows everything it touches,
and we don’t want to live it anymore.