I hate what Halloween does to my head. I wish for the lighter brighter constumes of a Twlevt Night Masque, those of Spring, and Space, and Ocean, or Sun...how about a little LIGHTness of being to replace the darkness of seeing.

The kid dressed like Garfield was really cute, and the one like Eeeeeyore. But that first awful face sends me back to places I no longer wish to go.

Their tiny faces float in front of me, their eyes empty and my heart as cold as what I see in them. And I feel the emptiness in the bed beside me, the fear of a small child bereft of her history, denied winter warmth squeezed between two others in the night. What of the light - and so I gave my lonely nights to the stars, where a part of me will always be, in day or night for fright of letting them float free and into insanity's quest. There is no rest.

And then the blue grey faces rise from the swollen river's fingers what catch the child at play when burgeoning star moss holds the flood no more. Two masks she spit, the river as she churned, vomited she did the lifeless hunks and chunks bereft of souls. At my door again...the nightmares sent me to the sky and I was only for the night - by day to sleep under a bush or desk or in the hay.