Free Verse
Come Into October
Come Into October There is a road to October, though maps refuse to mark it. You find it at the edge of afternoon, where the sunlight turns the color of honey poured through amber glass, where the wind learns a softer language and speaks in leaves.
By Kristen Barenthaler17 days ago in Poets
The House October Built. Top Story - October 2026.
I'm writing from your favorite place- can you guess where I am? The trip here was lined with all the homes I've ever lived in, and as I walked past, the lights in each one came on. The night was crisp and unquenchable, acorns grown soft underfoot, the smell of ozone from rain in the air mingling with the char of woodsmoke. The beauty of it disguised the truth- this all is a waiting room for loss, a lane lit with endless nostalgia like that last, peaceful dream before the final sleep. voices echo more here, the days winding ever shorter, coming to an inevitable conclusion like the last time you breathed out and failed to breathe in. Inside this house not quite a home, warm bedside light shines out of the crack beneath each door, down an endless hall. In the peaks of the trees, the crows ha and call (when the boughs rock, the cradle will fall). Here, you can count the minutes of dwindling light accumulating in the shadow that trails longer behind you; the day it breaks away, it leaves you with a feeling without a name. We're in that limbic time where the heat hasn't kicked on yet, and I wander through the drafty pre-dawn mornings like the very last ghost in an empty machine. the clock, which hasn't yet sprung back, creeps ever forward. My hands are steady when there's no one to watch me drink, to tip the tablespoons of shining gold liquid into my cup until it runneth over. the full moon outside? they call that a hunter's moon. it hunts me through the windowpanes as I hunt the vestiges of you. This house has many rooms and each time I leave one, the memory dissipates, slides into the cracks of my brain, burns on the pavement below. Here is where I sleep in different quilted beds and dream choose-your-own-adventure dreams only to wake in hallways, candle burnt down to my scarred fist. Everything is a parody of my everyday aesthetic, as if to say, I know you and you're a joke . Every time I bend to look under a door, to follow the thin knife of light, items I didn't know I was carrying fall from my hands, scatter like the feet of mechanical creatures. I am not lost here but I am certainly not found. I feel increasingly like a dream someone else can't stop having. The slight breeze from the last seventy-degree day ripples the surface of my heart. Soon will be the time of dying, the time of calls you never hoped to receive and hospital rooms, crumpled leaves and bare trees. This is only the deep wardrobe leading up to it - lined with treasure, warmth and nostalgia like the tunnel to Narnia except Narnia is just a replay of that one brother's betrayal, over and over, a multi-stabbing from a sugared blade. 31. There are 31 rooms. I think I'm fading, even as my reflection inside the mirror grows brighter. It’s time to lift it off the wall and see what’s behind.
By Raistlin Allen17 days ago in Poets
October, Again
When October hits, the world seems to change. We go from living our adult lives to remembering. The wet sidewalks beneath our feet, the plastic pumpkins gripping tight in our hands, the rustle of our clothes as we race up stairs, searching for the next house to trick-or-treat. Picking the ones that give out king-size bars. Avoiding the ones that hand out toothbrushes. Staying out well past curfew for just one more house further down the street. Laughing as we drag our haul back home, our treasures spilling out as we root through the candy. Trading pieces with family for something we like better. Don't like candy corn That goes to my sister. Brother hands me a Kit Kat, and I flash a smile at him. October becomes a place where we are all kids again. Reliving the same experience now under a different lens. I watch my own child do the same. Rooting through her own trove of goodies, bartering for how much candy she can eat before bed. I remember the words my father used and smile as I say them back. As much as your tummy can handle. This will be our second year of making that trade. She knows now when she's had enough. Two or three pieces, then she stops herself. And I watch her, somewhere between the memory of being the child and the wonder of being the parent. October becomes a place where everything has changed, and yet nothing has changed at all. The sidewalks are still wet. The candy still gets traded. The laughter still follows us home. Only the main characters have changed.
By Chel Writes17 days ago in Poets
