THE HANDLE THAT SMILES

:: 07.12.2026 ::

I fall asleep and the doors open
like eyelids made of midnight.
The same soft wound in the dark
yawns wider than galaxies.
Inside, the Universal Mall breathes
with Escher’s stolen lungs.
Stairs devour their own tails
in Möbius hunger,
balconies bloom into black orchids
that croon lullabies,
escalators sigh upward through rivers
of reversed rain
where drowned clocks swim like silver fish.
Every store sells what I once lost:
the exact color of my mother’s safety
before her screaming,
a jar of unwept infant light
that still sings in ultraviolet,
and small unworn shoes warm
with the memory of home
that walks by itself at 3 a.m. looking for me.
I walk past forgotten gods
eating eternity from greasy paper cups
that never empty.
Neon signs stutter in the first language
I swallowed as a baby —
shards of mirror still cutting my tongue,
infant starlight burning cold behind my teeth.
My older selves stand guard in cheap uniforms,
eyes tired, kind, unflinching as black holes.
They nod as I pass, smoking cigarettes
made of my unlived futures.
They have watched me almost leave
for thirty years of almost leaving.
Sometimes the glass elevator finds me.
It moves only sideways
through the memory of every version of myself.
Inside, a saxophone murmurs low
in blue thirds
while smoke curls like slow incense
made of dissolving galaxies
around the trembling idea of leaving.
I press my forehead to the cold glass,
just as I did in the photograph
that has not yet been taken,
and speak to the small boy still hiding
inside my ribs —
the boy who was born knowing everything:
“We are almost done hiding.
This time, when the walls fold
into the wings of impossible birds,
we will step through.”
The Mall exhales —
vast, ancient, reluctant, almost tender.
A new door appears.
Plain. Unremarkable.
Cut from the silence
between one heartbeat
and the place where God stopped answering.
I reach for the handle.
It is warm
and it is smiling.