Little Nightmares by Meredith Maltby
You are giving a speech at parent-teacher conference night.
The speech is going well, and everyone is listening to you.
A woman in the back row is mouthing something over and over.
She is silently mouthing something that you feel is directed at you personally.
You can’t tell what she is trying to say to you.
You finish the speech, and gather your keys and belongings.
The woman was trying to tell you there isn’t a speech.
You were not giving a speech.
Nobody was there.
§
You go to a restaurant by yourself after work. You order wine, and a goat cheese dip.
You are unsatisfied with how long it takes the waiter to get your food.
The waiter eventually comes and brings the cheese dip served in a spoon. He hands you the handle of the spoon to grab.
You begin to protest.
When you turn the spoon slightly in your hand, the spoon becomes as large as a bowl and the amount of cheese dip is maximized. The dip is maximized by the angle of light.
You try to apologize. The waiter’s eyes are angry and hurt.
Everyone in the restaurant is looking at you.
They are staring right at you in silence with dark eyes.
They are all angry.
§
Your mother is in the kitchen working on a surprise for your seventeenth birthday.
You have tried to peek in, but she won’t let you see it.
The sound of something heavy being dropped echoes in the house.
This doesn’t signify anything in particular to you.
You are not in a house. You are underground.
You do not have a mother. Nobody has a mother.
You can feel young children standing above you simultaneously with and without mothers.
Their mothers have long since been absent, planning surprises.
§
You are in a crowd with many other potential buyers.
Everyone is leaning and craning their necks to see the item in question.
They can’t quite see what they are trying so desperately to catch a glimpse of.
It is a dog raised in a gas station bathroom.
It is a measure of brand affinity.
It is your sister calling you a bitch for telling her how to work the carafe.
It is a man in light wash jeans walking briskly, mechanically past the Red Lobster.
It is an amputated leg squashed between faulty steel elevator doors.
It is a woman in Africa with a Panic! at the Disco t-shirt.
It is a foam board from the dollar store.
It is cleaning vomit off the sidewalk with an African vase.
It is a roller rink in Kentucky that does not tax.
It is a Hot Lunch.
It is a Celtic cross spread.
The crowd is falling over themselves trying to glimpse it.
No one knows what it is.
Meredith Maltby is from Chicago, IL. She was a featured poet at Design Cloud Chicago’s HERE/NOW event. Meredith has previously published her work in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Chicago Tribune, Storm Cellar, and The Fanzine, among others. You can find her work at meredithladdmaltby.com.
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