Name a monster some say and it's yours for life.
Many may never know it's true name or nature
yet they usually tend to make one up and ascribe
to it all the foul attributes of hell.
Why, they will be so proud of the monster they
have invented as to shout its direness from
the highest rooftops as they give it
a blanket so it doesn't catch
cold under their bed.
All the while the real monsters
slink and slyly wink as
you share a drink
with them over dinner
along with friendly banter
of the utmost esteem.
by Philip Wardlow October 7th, 2021
When you are a child you are in touch with the old magic that rides the winds in the month of October.
It's palpable, tangible, substantial in the air at night when the moon is full and darkness descends and the cool winds blow through the almost naked trees clinging.
Often, you laid in your bed, blanket held high, tight just below your eyes, as you stared at the shadows dancing, tapping just outside your window creeping, because every sound, every movement, outside or in, was more ominous in the enchanting halls that you called the days of October.
From one to thirty-one you knew you marched certainly to your gleeful deaths under the blue shadowed sky cast by a vengeful moon that had nothing better to do than to spy on you as you tried to sleep a fitful sleep.
As a child, you loved to fear, but feared to know the full extent that your fear could roam and go, but roam you did. And Fear always got the best of you, wide eyes and all as you ran to your Ma or Pa.
Secretly though, even consoled, you loved the tenseness of that feeling, that soul reeling fright, the goosebumps crawling across your skin at night.
You relished that magic, that what-if of awfulness lurking.
Life was alive in you. Breathing like a bellowed fired, and wanting to escape from that feeling was never a question truly ever posed in the slightest.
