I walk upon the carpet of crunching leaves; dying husks;
In their final days, they reveal all their colors – they die
More beautifully than they ever lived. But they die.
The night air is crisp; I pull it into my lungs like a diver who has just surfaced
After being deep, deep beneath the air
For a long, long time.
Deep, in darkness unfathomable and cold that he can’t feel anymore.
The moon is full; a moon that transforms men into beasts, they’ve said.
But it doesn’t transform me. (Would that it could! To walk under its light,
And feel my skin and bones and muscles drinking in that glow, and becoming
Something new.)
My feet spurn miles as the night advances toward dawn,
But I know the world turns so much faster beneath me.
Am I going along with its movement, so that it pushes me on ahead before it
Like a leaf caught in a breeze?
Or am I breasting its current, and losing ground with every step?
It doesn’t matter.
It’s Halloween night. The one night when I walk under the moon and drink the starlight.
The one night when I rise, I rise from lightless unfathomables,
To hear the leaves in their dying. To follow the curve of the earth and long
To be transformed.
Isn’t that what was promised? To be transformed. Like a child,
Shedding her costume after a long night, and being no longer
A ghost, or a pirate queen, or a bumblebee.
As I shed my flesh, or thought I had.
But I am flesh; flesh that yearns, flesh that seeks, flesh that walks.
But only on Halloween night. And only while the moon and stars rule heaven.
I’m glad, to walk. I thrill to the crunch of the leaves, the crisp in the air, the light of the moon.
I’m glad, that the grave isn’t forever. I don’t know how I emerge, or how I am clothed
In flesh. I seek no one; could they see me if I did? Yet I avoid them.
Perhaps that is the nature of the dead. Yet I am glad, to walk in their world, just once again,
Before a year of sleep, in lightless fathoms.
I am glad.
But, Oh! To be transformed!
Isn’t that what was promised?