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17 American Terminal In the dream we sit in a terminal of bruised reds and blues, waiting. It is understood we are not human and I for one don’t want to be there, don’t like these others who call themselves my kind. If it is a banquet I don’t remember any food. It is more like what they call a shower. We pass cheap products, vacuum-packed and smelling of plastic. Nothing is worth wanting. I can’t even see the lucky one. Passers pronounce the products’ praises, suggest the gifts will get consecutively better if we just stay seated. Beside me is an older woman who does not care. After hours of passing, I notice and speak to her, but do so clumsily through the prop of her jacket. Lovely! We like the same colors! something like that. She stares a long way back to who I am. Cheap shoes and scarves sliding through my hands. When her daughter arrives to sit at her feet, I, in the old presumption of kindness, begin to introduce them, then think, who am I to name anyone to anyone, being as we are faces of the same sleep. ...

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