HAUNTED HOUSE

 

Throughout the sweltering day at the fair,

strolling the miles of sticky, littered sidewalks,

air thick with the smell of August sweat,

beer, and sugar spun a hundred different ways,

my young daughter pleads repeatedly

to enter the dark gates of the haunted house.

She is drawn by the canned siren screams

piped through speakers perched on either side

of the cemetery's artificial grass, entranced

by the cool, gray tombstones hovering

above a shifting sea of mist, the thin limbs

of skeletons reaching up from below.

She wants nothing more than to be scared

out of her flesh, laughing all the while.

Each time we pass I must remind her that

the spooky castle, as she calls it, is meant only

for bigger kids, and each time I am met

with an exaggerated sigh of disappointment.

I do not speak of my own quiet fears,

the worst ones that eventually came true

or were erased by others more immediate,

ones that settled in like unwelcome squatters,

nudging one another to make room;

nor do I mention every terror that I hold

on her behalf, ones I cannot yet see, but sense

feeding on shadow, gathering strength.

One day she will turn away from my warnings.

One day I will have to let go just enough,

let the devils dance in their costumes

of flesh, and every mad beast around her roar;

one day I must trust the light within her

to repel every ghost yet to come.