Wolverine Stew: Happy Halloween!

My nights this time of year are made of

Home-made cemeteries and their hundred lights

Laughing in the forest made of

Bony twenty-sided dice

The candy corn tree and strings

(both web and metal)

Of an open mic echoing in halls I once walked

My own breath becoming fog in

The lamplit snow falling as we passed out candy from

An antique plastic pumpkin

Watching together as skeletons dance in gourds

Every porch lined with grinning faces

Their night-sky mold interior lit by electric candles

The sky clearing just in time to see the Hunter’s

Moon hanging in those last moments of running

In the dark, in my mask, in the cold, content

I will wish everyone I know and those I pass

That feeling of being at home in all this

My ideal is to be a worm-infested caramel apple

Hoping to be sickly sweet and full of life

Sometimes I worry I make a ghost of myself

But tonight, I get to come back

And this time, I’ll remain a little longer