Portmanteau by Berlinda Paliza Recacho

Portmanteau (poem and collage illustration) by Berlinda Recacho (IG: birdlane_echoarc)

Portmanteau 

Two spaces I gravitate to are shopping malls and haunted houses—what if they merged and moved into the same compound?

Tastes change, but this fascination still holds true —though malls were the third place of my youth and I have yet to set foot in a casa infested with fantasma, but perhaps

That is too harsh—better to say possessed—or repossessed, now that the mall, that temple of low

taste 

is dying, or already dead, becoming a monument to the late

great 

material age; a brick and mortar graveyard 

haunted by our memories of shopping 

together

alone