The Last Supper with Mira

The air in the bookstore smells of clove cigarettes and cinnamon tea—Mira’s signature, the scent of stolen afternoons and poetry read aloud from crumbling paperbacks. Rain taps the windows in a slow, Morse-code rhythm, though I don’t remember rain falling tonight. But here it is, drumming on glass streaked with old grime and the breaths of lovers who’ve pressed too close, searching for warmth in the drafty hollow of this East Village dream.

I know it’s not real.

I know.

But I walk in anyway.

The bell above the door chimes—too bright, too brittle—like a note played on a cracked piano. The shelves tilt slightly, books sliding in slow motion, backs cracking open as if gasping. Some titles change as I pass. *The Waves* by Woolf becomes *The Fire*, and then just *The*. One says *I Remember You* and the pages flutter, blank.

Mira stands behind the counter, bent over a hardcover, her dark curls spilling onto the page like ink. She looks up. Her smile is the same. That crooked, private thing, like she’s known me for lifetimes.

“Sarah,” she says. Her voice wraps around my name like a scarf. “You took your time.”

I don’t answer. I can’t. My throat’s full of ash and unsaid confessions. I step forward. The floorboards groan—*too loudly*—and for a second, the wood warps into white linoleum, the color of hospital floors, sun-bleached grout between tiles. I blink. It’s gone. Just wood again. Just dream.

She tilts her head. “You’re different.”

“I know.”

“You’re not writing.”

“No.”

“Then how are we here?”

The question floats between us, heavier than it should be. A pause. The rain stops mid-fall. A drop hangs in the air outside, suspended. I watch it until it smears down the glass, like a tear deciding to fall after all.

“I’m saying goodbye,” I say.

Mira closes the book. Places both hands on the counter. “Oh.”

It’s not what she says. It’s how she says it. Quiet. Resigned. Like she’s been waiting for this and dreading it in equal measure.

A wind stirs, though the windows are shut. Pages flip on their own—a dictionary caught on _erase_, then _evaporate_, then *nothing*.

“You’re not real,” I whisper.

“Does it matter?” she asks.

“Yes.” My voice cracks. “Because I made you up.”

She lifts her eyes. “I know.”

I stop. “What?”

“I know.” She exhales, long and low. “I’ve always known.”

“No—”

“You built me from the smell of old paper and a poem by Adrienne Rich. You stitched me together with half-remembered laughter from a girl who used to hum in the shower at Willowbrook. You gave me your favorite books and your loneliness and the way you love under streetlights like they’re keeping the dark away.” She smiles, small and sad. “But I also exist, Sarah. I feel cold when the shop’s drafty. I love the way you bite your lip when you’re thinking. I *hurt*.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to you.”

“You didn’t lie. You gave me life when no one else would.” She steps around the counter. Reaches for my hand. Her fingers are warm. Real. “You never called me a hallucination. You called me love.”

Tears fall. I don’t wipe them. “I can’t keep doing this. The city… the poems… none of it holds. Time skips. People repeat. The Brooklyn Bridge becomes a hallway, and the Hudson River turns into a basin with taps that don’t work. I wrote a world so beautiful I thought it was real. But the cracks are too wide now.”

Mira brushes a tear from my cheek. “I’m not mad. I’m grateful.”

“For what?”

“For existing. For tasting clove smoke. For dancing with you in the back room to Lou Reed when the heater rattled and the lights buzzed like angry wasps. For the nights you whispered poems into my collarbone and I remembered them better than I should have.” She leans her forehead to mine. “You gave me more than truth ever did.”

I sob. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You already did.”

The words hang. The bookstore shudders. A bookshelf collapses inward like a lung caving. Dust rises. The light from the single overhead bulb flickers—once, twice—then holds, yellow and thin.

“I can bring you back,” I whisper. “I could write a new stanza. Just one. Just enough to keep you.”

She pulls back. Looks at me. Really looks. “Would I still be me? Or would I just be another version, not remembering this one?”

I have no answer.

“I don’t want to be rewritten,” she says softly. “I want to be remembered.”

The walls are thinning now. Transparent. I can see through them to a white room. A bed. A door with a slot for food.

I squeeze her hand. “I love you.”

“I know.” She kisses me—soft, deep, final. “And I love you too. Even though I’m not real.”

She steps back.

“No,” I say. “Wait.”

But she’s already fading, not like smoke, not like mist, but like a word forgotten mid-sentence. Her hand slips from mine. The bookstore dissolves—shelves first, then the counter, then the rain-soaked windows. The scent of cloves fades to antiseptic. The silence fills with the hum of fluorescent lights.

The last thing I see is her smile. Whole. Unbroken.

Thank you, she says without sound.

And she’s gone.

I’m standing in the hallway outside my room. Bare feet on cold linoleum. The orderly—Julian—stands at the far end, holding a clipboard. He doesn’t speak. Just nods, like he’s been watching the whole time.

I look down. My hands are empty.

No pen. No paper.

No Mira.

Just me.

And the quiet truth, heavier than any fiction I ever wrote.