Halloween morning.
My birthday candles
are barely cold,
and already
the world
has turned toward ghosts.
Typical.
I wake thirty-one
with October
still clinging
to my skin.
There are pumpkins
on porches,
leaves skittering
like tiny bones
across pavement,
children waiting
to become monsters
for one night.
And me—
I have spent years
becoming less afraid
of mine.
There are ghosts
I no longer run from.
I know their names.
Grief.
Abandonment.
Rage.
The woman
I used to be
when survival
was the only language
my body spoke.
Come closer,
then.
The veil is thin.
Let every dead version
of me
step forward.
The girl who begged
to be chosen.
The mother
who thought she had failed.
The woman
who kept confusing
being wanted
with being loved.
The wounded thing
who sharpened herself
because softness
felt dangerous.
I welcome them.
Not home.
Home is mine now.
But to the fire.
Sit.
Warm your hands.
See what we became.
There are children
sleeping safely
inside these walls.
There are poems
where silence
used to live.
There is laughter.
There is rage
that finally learned
where to belong.
There is tenderness
that survived
every reason
to disappear.
And when midnight comes
and October
finally closes her door,
I will not follow
my ghosts
into the dark.
I will thank them
for getting me here.
Then turn toward November,
thirty-one,
alive,
and carrying
my own light.
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