✩•̩̩͙*˚ 𝔚𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔣𝔦𝔢𝔩𝔡 ˚*•̩̩͙✩

Odelia Wu

At the Westfield Stratford City, we buy ourselves things in order to live. Including but not limited to:

Melatonin gummies
£5 Primark microfiber sheets
Teflon pans
Silicone-based lube
Sulfate and paraben-free shampoo

Our first day in London. One stop east deposits us at the glass doors of the mall. Tube to terminus without ever seeing the sky—a prosaic journey that soon became ritual, routine. And like all rituals and routines that gave form to our lives back then, it unfurled somber and stained by an acid longing we knew would never be reconciled.

Every few weeks we’d crawl back, often without legitimate reason. We derived a strange comfort in the vulgar familiarity of the Westfield. The dullness of its sheen, the deadpan of its shoppers, the odor that wafted deep-fried and artificially sweetened and synthetically composed through its vacuous halls.

Gruen transfer: (1) the psychological effect of disorientation that occurs when one steps into a shopping mall, (2) the 2008 Australian television show aired on ABC. The capitalist machinations of their Daedalian design, subjecting consumers to a polished barrage of plastic and polyester temptation. Encased in glass and acrylic, under LED lights, deprived of temporal markers, of windows and clocks, we time travel. Nothing exists but this, here, where all things are stripped of definition and binaries collapse. Briefly release us from the suffocation of this strange, ashen isle.

The evening after 9/11, Bush told us to shop. Here is our autonomous retail America, home away from home, where petrochemical-filled Baccarat Rouge clones line the walls of the Arabian fragrance section, lace thongs cling to mannequins with childbearing hips and microscopic waists, and bath products have names like Sex Bomb and American Cream and Equity.

You disappear into Boots to look for sleeping pills and prescription painkillers. I roam Superdrug’s skincare aisles, picking up sleek Korean-branded bottles at random: Glow Deep Serum Rice + Alpha Arbutin. Cosrx Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence. SKIN1004 Centella Hyalu-CICA Water-Fit Sun Serum.

You grumble about how long I take to find what I’m looking for. The truth is I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m waiting for it to come to me, praying one of the shelves holds the answer. I search for things to make you less miserable; for herbal teas, hair loss treatments, lavender aromatherapy sprays. If I can just get you to sleep, maybe you’ll remember what it feels like to dream about me.

Burgers at Shake Shack. I finally convinced you to stop taking the tomato off. Then emerge into dusk. Time gallops forwards on all sides, a billowing Saharan dust cloud. My long hair whips our cheeks raw as we plow west, struggling under the reusable plastic weight of our baggage.

Odelia is a writer from New York. Her writing has appeared in SPECTRA, Expat Press, Hobart Pulp, and elsewhere. You can find her on Instagram @chronically_injured.