I don’t do Halloween.  Not because it’s pagan or satanic or anything, anymore.  It’s not; no more than Thanksgiving has anything to do with the harvest or the Pilgrims.  Just because it’s just a silly holiday that holds no personal meaning for me, and I need to stay well hence from candy. But in each of the past several years, I’ve tried to write something for Dia de los Muertos. I wrote this on Sunday and Monday, to lay out as this year’s offering.

Saying Goodnight


It’s dark. The night has gotten in the house and taken every corner, every closet, for itself, except where he sits at the desk.  He has just the small green hooded lamp which illuminates a book and leaves the rest of his study in gloom. Beyond the open door, he can barely see the hallway, which leads to his kitchen, his bathroom and the world.

The sun sets early this time of year, touching the trees in the park while folks are driving home from work. He walked out at five to watch it pause, then fall into the sea. Since he also saw the sun rise – bold and warm even in the end of October – rise up and stand all day and set again, he knows this dark that holds the house is just the shadow of the world. The black curtain that lets the pavement cool, and the grass take a drink of fog and sleep.

The mind is locked in with its secrets, behind windows smudged by dirty hands, shutters tilted to show a tide of floating dust. But in this house, the sun comes in and shafts of light fall on all the places where his people rest.

Of course the house is haunted. Why wouldn’t it be? His grandfather comes to him on Sunday afternoons in autumn, and on hot summer days. They sit on the sofa and wait for the game to start. They sit for hours, until he gets up for a drink and comes back to find the old man gone. Outside, the children laugh and play.

His grandmother comes with a softness of singing. She is seen at the stove, making breakfast, or hanging bedclothes on the line. She appears in pink and pale yellow, in a posture of prayer, or at the sink looking out at the infinite sky.

At the door of his study, at the best range of his lamp’s light, he stands. Down the hall, he can make out the furniture shapes. The back of the sofa, a table’s edge. He could go down just a few steps, and hit a switch: The lights over the dining room or the smooth, bright globe in the kitchen. Everything would be bright and clear.

No. He closes his eyes and slowly turns, hoping that whatever channels serve to join the bookend worlds are open. So maybe when he looks, he’ll find his dog asleep on her side again beneath his desk. Though he’s alone in the lamplight, he knows she must be near. So near that it should make him cry. Maybe she’s resting by the piano or beside his bed, somewhere in the shadows he has not dispelled.

Now he starts in the hallway and goes from room to room, turning on every light. Even in the closets and the hood above the stove. The porch light, the garage.

Goodnight, I live in the incandescent world.
I love you, forever, but the moon is up
and if I go out along the street, apart
from the lights of the house,
the moon may throw my shadow on the earth.



© 2005 by J. Kyle Kimberlin
2nd Draft 11/2/05
all rights reserved