All I Have Are Memories of Wishes – Nic Saluzzi

October 8, 2025

There’s an old fountain filled with coins that’s all dried-up now. It sits in the center of the mall I used to go to as a kid with the other kids, now, a decade later, in the process of being bought up to be gutted and stuffed with the pulsing entrails of a data center that’ll never stop humming that haunting hum.

The other day, yesterday?,—the days all feel the same when you have no schedule and no job and nothing to do but wander around memories, decaying, dry, dead—I drove over to the mall where that wishing-fountain sat dry, dead, waiting for me, for anyone, to grab a penny off the dusted half-lit floor and toss it with a clatter with the hope that the water would come magically running up and out. There, I found a penny, like I had as a kid with the other kids when we’d toss those useful coins, now useless, wishing for luck, wishing for good grades, a glance from a crush, a hit in the next ballgame, an “I’m proud of you” from the nearest adult looking down at our faces always looking up. Now, that other day, I tossed the penny without thinking to wish a wish, without any expectation of anything except that sad tinny echo that’d rebound, rebound, rebound, reminding me of all that’s gone, of the paltry debris that’s left.

At the Asian grocery store in the strip mall up the highway, I bought three I Ching coins, but I haven’t got around to buying a copy of that fortunate book yet. All I can think about is the sound of copper bouncing around the y2k carcass of shuttered stores and faded signs, and men in suits walking around, muttering in put-on tones, gesturing in grand gestures, appraising and negotiating what was next.

Today, I got an automated rejection email from a job I forgot I applied to, saying that the position was filled. There was nothing else to do, so I went back over to the mall, parking crooked across those unoccupied faded-white lines. Inside, I filled out a job application at the first line-less fast-food joint I saw in the sad sticky food court, and I watched as a little kid in baggy jeans looked at me then looked at the empty fountain and tossed a quarter into that dried-up nothing.

“I wished you get the job,” he said. I smiled and a tear fell and the sun shone through the glass and the sun shone though the fountain and another tear fell, and as my vision blurred, and as the kid walked away, I swore the fountain was running and splashing and wishing all over again.