ghouls gone wild

Ceridwen posted a writing prompt yesterday. It asked to use the following words in a poem: costumer, slash, skitter, invisible, replay, lunge, blacken, twinge, ripple, and remnant. So here is my go.



growing ghouls

i stitch a costume from remnants
tucked neatly among cobweb
and dust mite and attic beam,
then slash the ends to tatters.
she is something ghoulish again,
with blackened eyes and again
stands at the armoire
and lunges at my camera,
her fingers splayed and curled
like a beast who’d sooner
scratch out my eyes.

she’ll skitter out the door
and into invisible night,
while I smooth the ripples
in the fabric bolts,
tuck them back in the wall,
and feel that twinge again:
another halloween gone,
another child leaning too fast
toward the light,
another mother who replays
the last ten years,
picking over the scraps
of things done wrong
for remnants of right,
then heading back down
to answer the door
for somebody else's princess.