In the Dunya
by John Gabriel Adkins 



My life was normal but it got worse. I was married but it got worse. Now I'm out here on a city corner watching cars pass with gusto. I wave away flies and mosquitoes and vultures. Hunger strikes so I reach for my refreshing bottle of Hidden Ralley Vanch to refresh myself, but I'm still famished. So I traipse into the evening looking for roadside edibles, for discarded French fries and Big Gulps. I look for Sarah. Funny colors are just starting to crop up in my eye-edges when my imaginary friends track me down. They punch me up in the alleyway and disappear offstage.

I climb lightly scuffed out of potent alley garbage and check the black bags for Sarah. The sun is melting and kaleidoscoping up above right now and you have to remember the smell of chicken pot pie from your kid years, back when it had a scent. But who has time for that? I rip open another bag. Out in the street there's a sound like a two-ton man skateboarding over concrete and I'm confused again. I reach for my Vanch. It's empty.

I find myself in a gas station convenience store. Louis Armstrong is spitting hot bars in Spanish over a radio as I shuffle two packets of gum to the checkout. "Why am I not buying food?" I ask the smiling cardboard cutout at the register. I can't hear an answer. Louis seems to say, "Gotcha."

Now I'm sprawled emaciated on a park bench in the dark and I'm blowing bubbles. This is supposed to be a man's world-oyster, but it's your shadow who calls the shots, I think. Now I see Sarah standing over me with that I-was-waiting expression.

"I knew you weren't a lie," I say.

"How were you led to me?"

"My best friend in the subway played piano keys that proved you'd be here."

"What was the second sign?"

"I was out under the stars in a cold night meteor shower. I saw your face in my tea leaves, and my alphabet soup spelled your name."

She smiles and her eyes grow tall as windmills. I look up from my bench and blow another bubble.

"The bad people keep saying bad things in my head," I mumble. 

"I know. This soup will help."

She hands me a bowl of steaming pork and cabbage pozole, spoon included.

"Meet me offstage at the corner of Paper and Plastic. This is the last riddle."

Sarah sprints off fast and I chase, chasing with pozole balanced in hand as the sun rises, but she disappears into a mousehole where I can't follow even though I strain. A ship of living bone people comes crashing down the boulevard to trade in tacky tapestries. I'm lost in the huff and hustle of morning urbania and the imaginaries are running up behind me again with violence in their hearts. C'est la vie.

I eat a spoonful and exit the stage.