Halloween, a moment to be someone else
A revelrous night of indulgence
And laughter
Of sticky fingers, silly faces,
Fantastical frights.
Like everything else we don’t appreciate when we are young,
We spend the rest of our life
Searching
For a way to be so free
Trying on different personalities
Like a halloween mask.
Cloaking ourselves in different costumes
For the office,
The home,
For a night out on the town.
Maybe all of our adult life is a Halloween night
Filled with the temptation to consume
And consume
Until we are overly full,
covered in chocolate,
Drifting off to sleep
In our polyester costume.
These days I’ve been working on believing in magic again. Because the magic didn’t leave, just my belief in it. We lose magic by pushing it away with disbelief, not because it chooses to leave us. So put on your mask, your bangled earrings, your pirate laugh, your sharpened teeth, your voracious hunger. Stalk the night and swallow the moon. Why have we ever let anyone tell us that we don’t harbor multitudes inside of us? Why have we let the world tame our souls? Let Halloween be a reminder to let your truth burble and gurgle like a cauldron boiling with bubbles until it bursts from your throat with a roar.
Go down, through the cobbled streets,
Haunted with fog in the early morning. Cross
Over the stone bridge, where the shadows gurgle with water-talk.
Soon the path will give way to emerald grass studded with
Tilted stones. Under the gnarled oak is where you’ll find who you’re looking for.
Grass here always seems to grow lusher, greener, fertilized by the gift of
Resting bodies. Most people think I come here to be
Alone, but I’m surrounded by people, they just don’t demand my attention.
Velvet moss blankets stone. I take my time, saying a polite hello to
Everyone I pass, until I reach my spot in the shade of a maple tree. I lay down my
Yellow checkered blanket, pull out my leather journal, my navy blue pen,
A soft ripe persimmon, and a thermos of crisp green tea. I lean back and wait, for the
Rippling currents of words to reach my ears, to take my pen and write the words of the
Dead, their melancholy soul songs and their thankful prayers to one who chose to listen.
I watch a silky black mink run into the green gold trees and I follow as it’s quick little paws skitter across fallen logs in the dense forest, sunlight filtering down through the leaves, speckling the path made of compacted dirt and rotting leaves. But then it stops, next to a large old tree, its bark a ghostly gray. It’s withered limbs and long dead branches make me think of magic, of ghosts and witches, of withered wet fog slithering across a buttery moon. I swear in the last moment before the mink dips behind that imposing tree that the shadow of a woman appears behind it, in a long black dress and a crystal necklace that glints in the scattered sunlight. But I blink and they are both gone, maybe never there. I think about them on the long walk home. When I wake up the next day and decide to walk back to the tree, it is not there. Instead, in the clearing where it should have stood, a sprinkling of milk thistle blooming purple, it’s stems bristling with stickers.
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