Tonight, the moon is a pale coin
flipped by the thumb of the universe — and it lands on heads, of course,
because everyone is wearing one that doesn’t belong to them.

The children are out,
dressed as pirates,
astronauts,
a slice of pizza,
a traffic cone,
and one small Frankenstein who keeps tripping over his bolts.

They knock on doors as if they were collecting taxes in miniature,
and the adults comply,
offering chocolate tributes to avoid being egged or cursed in Latin.

I pass a skeleton who nods politely,
his femur clicking like a metronome.
He’s on his way to a party where no one will eat,
everyone will pretend to be someone who died under mysterious circumstances.

And I think — this is the one night we all agree to be haunted.
Not by ghosts,
but by imagination,
by the thrill of pretending we are not ourselves.

Even the trees play along,
draped in toilet paper like ancient mummies who’ve had enough of the afterlife and want to party with the living.

So I light a candle in a pumpkin’s hollowed skull,

and watch it grin back at me with the wisdom 
of someone who knows that fear,
when properly sugared,
is just another way to say hello.