Daywalkers
We weren’t there to shop you said that right away like it was a rule we both understood
The mall hummed with fluorescent daylight fake sun poured out of long white tubes and bounced off tile floors polished to a nervous shine
You leaned against the railing on the second level coffee going cold in your hand watching people move below us like slow water
“Daywalkers,” you said
The word made me laugh like we were something else night creatures accidentally caught in the daylight without our armor
Everyone below looked so deliberate
Parents dragging kids past storefronts selling things no one really needed
Teenagers orbiting each other like anxious planets
Couples arguing quietly in front of a pretzel stand
Old men walking laps like the mall was a track for the nearly forgotten
You narrated them like a wildlife documentary
Here we see the suburban shopper in it’s natural habitat
And every now and then you’d bump your shoulder into mine like you were checking to make sure I was still there
I watched the people but mostly I watched you
Your hair falling in your eyes your crooked half-smile every time someone did something strange like the man trying on three identical jackets as if one might finally tell him who he was
We sat there for hours doing nothing useful
Just two night-thinkers pretending to be normal in the middle of the afternoon
The mall kept glowing
The daywalkers kept moving
And for a little while above the crowd in that fake sunlight we felt invisible
Like ghosts resting on a balcony watching the living pass underneath us
