five. trickortreat

five. trickortreat

we don’t carve pumpkins in october; all pumpkins rot eventually.
i had a friend whose mother had ten children. each child got to
cut a face into orange flesh and ate pumpkin pie and soup and
spat seeds out onto the playing field for months afterwards.
the seeds were hard to chew.
i would collect them off the frozen ground, and
my (m)other would grind them into dust.

we don’t hang decorations up on halloween; all decorations come down eventually.
i had a friend whose mother spent thousands of pounds on realistic
animatronics to adorn the front garden. they sprang to life when motion
was detected. the neighbourhood kids were too scared to approach
the house and the sweets were left
untouched.
the morning after, i would sneak in unseen by
plastic faces and scoop up all the candy and shove
it down my throat by the fistful.

we don't trick-or-treat on all hallow’s eve; all children come home eventually.
i had a friend whose mother let her take her younger brother and they
knocked on the wrong door at the wrong time and no one saw him again.

the year i was sixteen, (m)other let me go.

(my mother, my real mother, lived in a big house that had
no room for me. she worked in a bar and drank
stolen sips of whiskey when no one was looking and ate the bowl nuts and the
raspberries off the cocktail sticks. she had a daughter
who looked just like me, but inside out. every night,
she had to mop up a bloody trail from the cot
to the hedge. she always
left the back door unlocked.)

i went out at dusk with a pillowcase over my bald head.
i did not know which house was hers. to me, they all looked the same.
i knocked on every door with a light on, held the pillowcase open, and waited to be welcomed home.

people said i had a cool costume. who was i dressed as?
i was wearing myself.

the last house i knocked upon did not answer, but i knew it was
the one by the hole in the hedge, the size of a baby.
my real mother stood in the kitchen and rolled up her
sleeves. on the table lay the inside-out daughter,
bright as the flesh of a plum.
my mother took her by the cuffs, the way you turn a wet sock,
and eased her over her own head, an inch at a time.
there was a small wet sound. she hummed like
it was a household chore.
where once had been the grey meat of a brain, there was now
a luscious head of thick hair.

when it was done, she fed her raspberries, one at a time, into the new mouth, then
she turned and locked the door.

5. (a child taken on halloween is replaced by morning. nobody notices, except the mother.)