the mirror

a gaping silver

lake

a skeleton

of a girl living

inside it

smeared eyeshadow

and running mascara

frame her face

hair in

a limp ponytail

strands escaping

trying to

get away

bones of wire

and skin

of paper

creases and

scars

and

a

dark

dark

soul

lips tremble

flakes of dying

skin fall

like snow

you ask

who are you?

she smiles.

do you really not recognize yourself?

I wake up right at 12:00 midnight on the dot, as per usual. It’s time for my nightly bathroom run. Turning back the covers, I spy an odd apparition standing at the foot of my bed. “Who are you?” I gasp, taking in the grim appearance of the personage’s faintly glowing face, dramatically compressed lips, and wildly dishevelled long hair.

“I be your ghost … of Halloween past, Jordan. Go about your business and don your mask so we can be on our way.”

I scurry to the bathroom with knees knocking so hard, I’m not sure I’ll even be able to go, but nature takes its course. I wash up and drink a little water, feeling fairly confident now that the bad dream I'd witnessed was just that, a dream.

Making a beeline back to my bed, I’m accosted by the wrist by a skeletal but alarmingly strong hand. A black cloth mask is placed, not a little forcefully, over my nose and mouth. How this happens, complete with the little ringlets being placed over each of my ears in turn to hold the mask firmly in place as in one motion while one spectral arm still grips my arm, amazes me! And then we’re whirled, myself and “my ghost” through the walls and over the trees.

There are kids everywhere in sight, bobbing along the roads with plastic jack-o-lanterns swaying at their sides lit by tiny candles inside.

I see a pretty little girl in a pink dress, her bosom swelling to fill out her bodice and long, brown hair falling softly, framing a face so freckled that the freckles stand out even in the dim light of the candles. “Look at that sweet girl,” I find myself saying.

“Do you really not recognize yourself?” asks my ghostly comrade. Then the memory comes rushing back, the year my friend and I went trick or treating more than once at the same houses. That was what prompted me, Jason, to put on the cute dress with the falsies and my mother’s fashionable fall to complete my transformation on the one and only night I dressed up as a girl.