Unhaunting the house

Make your darklings your darlings.

Dear friends of the Courtyard,

Happy Halloween, y’all. A poem today to snack on with your pumpkin spice lattes.

Many thanks always,

Andrew

I think there’s a haunted house inside each of us.

Only I can go through mine.

Only you can go through yours,

and must,

a bunch of times,

a million times,

until the haunted house is at last

just a house.

Your house.

My house.

A home.

*

What happens when you decide to go inside?

*

The first time you run through screaming.

Just, freaking out.

Pure adrenaline.

*

The second time, maybe you take it a little slower.

You pause long enough to have your suspicions confirmed.

Yes, there is indeed a madman behind that door, grinning murder.

Run!

And yes, there is a werewolf in the parlor.

And look, an evil scientist operating on the kitchen table,

his victim bound and gagged.

Sweet Mother of God.

And then the woman, crying in the basement.

You go to comfort her

and she turns into a screaming banshee

and now you’re screaming again

running for your life

out of the house

back into the light.

Never again, you say.

Never again.

*

But you are the light.

And your darklings are still there,

here,

waiting for you.

They’ll wait forever,

for each of us,

for the love that only we can give them.

*

Make your darklings your darlings,

if you dare.

*

I’ve dared, and come out screaming.

And I’ve dared again,

and again,

and again,

and I imagine it never ends.

I assume they just keep coming.

But so, too, do I.

*

So I have come to know the madman behind the door.

He wasn’t sure what to do the first time I didn’t run away from him.

It was kind of awkward.

He was a little embarrassed.

I asked him, “How you doing?”

His grin faded.

He fumbled for words.

Told me no one ever asked him that before.

Took a while,

many more visits,

before he trusted me enough

to tell me where he came from,

why the freaky smile,

what he gets up to here in the dark when he’s alone.

Took even more time before he finally broke down,

sobbed in my arms,

gave me the pain of his long solitary sentence here in the dark.

So, we’re cool now.

Me and Bernard.

He’s a good guy.

Just got lost there for a while, inside.

*

Same with the others.

You should’ve seen it when the werewolf let me scratch behind his ears,

rub his belly.

That was wild.

Freaking beautiful, man.

You should’ve been there when the scientist finally took responsibility,

apologized,

and then again, a long time after that, when the guy on the operating table forgave him.

And then that day in the basement when the woman let me hold her hand.

That one took a while.

*

Unhaunting ourselves does take a while,

an eternity probably,

but all we have is forever

my mom likes to say.

*

Why bother?

*

Because we are worthy of love.

*

Because it’s just damn inconvenient to be afraid of ourselves,

and painful to be afraid of each other,

to be afraid at all.

*

Because it just isn’t true that the truest nature of anything

is anything

other than

beauty.

*

And because there is beauty to be made

in the search for that beautiful truth

inside everything:

the beauty of patience cultivated,

the beauty of grace grown,

of valor honed,

of faith forged and trust fortified

and so much more,

the great blossoming of who we really are

of who we can become

when we decide

at last

everyday

to open the door

step inside

and make this house our own.