Her neck cracks—well, I’d say it rather crunches.
Crinkles, almost.
She side-stepped with a bit too much gusto and her bones locked, crooked, and off.
She is a strange creature, one that lurks with seemingly no purpose, clanking around down every dead-end street in search of some soul she lost several Halloweens ago. The shadow of that dying hope burns the only flame in her old jack-o-lantern frame.
And as her neck cracked, she planted her feet into the shifting maple leaf-infested dirt as if the fire had at last been snatched, leaving but a thin trace of its ghost swimming through the air. At least she caught her fragile skull before it met its second untimely death upon the beckoning ground, and she held it curiously in her shaking hand, cracking, crunching, and crinkling, as she peered into it in hope of discovering something she felt she had lost.
She looked beyond to the sinking sun—its inevitable fate almost done.
The rising moon’s glow shone yet brighter, and she thought of how little she was like her.
She felt the warmth of the dying sun and felt that, maybe, she, too, was one.
The heat slipped about her in a warm embrace. How could she ignore the burning sweet taste?
It blossomed, and it grew with the speed of a star the sky threw.
How easy it would be to slip under the horizon and, disappear for a while, be just like the sun.
Or rather, should she be another, more specifically, the other?
The one on the other side of the sky, which during the day is a bit shy.
How easy it would be to slip under the horizon and, disappear for a while, be just like the sun.
But no matter the darkness that surrounds, it wears a shining crown.
Made from a light known to day, the moon is a ghost of what couldn’t stay.
But nevertheless, it does stay, haunting the night sky after every day.
Perhaps, she didn’t have to be the sun; perhaps, her fate wasn’t quite done.
She could be instead the moon, keeping the sun’s end from coming too soon.
She held the skull up to her cracking, crunching, crinkling neck and fastened it securely so that it wouldn’t come undone ever again. The sun no longer beamed its pumpkin orange across her bones, so she looked up to the dark sky. She looked up to the moon. She looked up to the ghost of the sun and felt her joints settle, secure, and safe.
She carried on, strolled past the empty gray houses, danced across the cornfield, and skipped through the howling forests with the feeling of skin wrapped around her, hair flowing behind her, and a soul warm inside her.
