When I visit Cemeteries.
I always step quietly by
the youngest sleepers.
Saint Mary’s Cemetery
Fox Lake, Wisconsin USA
Photo A,M. Moscoso
Saint Mary’s Cemetery
Fox Lake, Wisconsin USA
Photo A,M. Moscoso
Hush
Month: October 2024
The Visitor
For Writober Prompt: Fear of Haunting
Photo By J.M. Moscoso
In my sister’s house
the floor boards do not creak
in the middle of the night
when everybody is asleep and
downstairs in the living room
their dog is curled up on the couch
with his eyes gently shut, he also snores.
His name is Stitch.
In my brother’s house
the doors stay shut, once they’ve been closed
they are obedient doors, the hinges are well oiled
there’s nothing unusual about my brother’s oak doors.
His cats have never used them for scratching post
and I doubt they ever will.
After I visit my brother’s house and after I’ve
returned from my sister’s house
I drift up the marble steps of my home, just before dawn
as quiet as a mouse.
I float through my iron gates,
I find my name upon the wall
near the doorway where dry autumn leaves
and dusty flower petals are littered upon the floor.
I close my eyes ( which are never really open ) and I sigh a sigh
that nobody ever hears.
In my home all of the floors creak,
and all of the hinges groan
when you push them open and wake them up
in my quiet home, that I do not share with another soul
all of the cats and birds and rats that shelter here with me
sit and sleep with their eyes lightly shut
and you should know that
when I am here and only here
can I rest in peace.
- written at SeaTac Airport
Up Up and Away!
I’m going to visit my Son and his family in Wisconsin tomorrow.
So I will be writing on the road, as it were.
See ya in the funny pages!
The Pumpkin Hunter
Flash Fiction inspired by Writober Prompt: ISOLATION
Photographer Unknown
Every year I carve a single pumpkin, a sugar pumpkin for Halloween and I leave it on my porch.
I like to carve sugar pumpkins because they do not yield easily to my carving knife. Sugar Pumpkins put up a fight. They make me work if I want to change them. If I want to put a scream on their mouth, terror in their eyes, if I want to give them a new hairline or fangs I have to use a mallet or a hammer.
Despite their light and fluffy name, Sugar Pumpkins are tough.
That’s ok in my book. I’m up for the challenge.
Jamie Wyeth
After I’ve completed my carving, after I’ve put a tealight in my Sugar Pumpkins empty shell I take my pumpkins out to my porch and as I stand on the top step deciding where to place my pumpkin, sometimes one of my neighbors who may be out walking their dog or ‘getting in their steps’ will call up to me and ask what I’ve got there in my hands.
Of course they don’t really care what I have in my hands. I could have the Mona Lisa in one hand and a still beating and bloody heart in the other. People only ask what I have in my hands because they think they should ask. I’m standing there. They’re standing there. It’s just a thing that neighbors who don’t really know or pay attention to do.
I hold my pumpkin up and I smile.
” This year’s victim.” I call back cheerily.
” What?” They will ask, like they do every year as they stroll by, ” What did you say?” they ask without really expecting an answer.
” My Halloween Pumpkin. ” I sing back.
They laugh.
I chuckle.
They smile without looking really looking at me or my sugar pumpkin and as they wish me a Happy Halloween and as they walk away, sometimes I put my sugar pumpkin on the bottom step and sometimes I stand there with my re-purposed Halloween decoration- by that I mean a severed head that I may have harvested from the old cemetery outside of town and I think to myself- decorating for Halloween is fun.
I enjoy it because I am at peace with the fact that I’m only ever doing it for myself.
It’s not like anyone ever notices.