After Aziza Barnes
2 years of cryosleep at my parents house & the burden of the california sun robbing
me of a seasonal machine some clockwork expectation to live inside of that
will keep time for me the ebb and flow not of the waves lapping mere minutes
from the house but of sweater weather & orange burnt autumn tinge & falling
leaves on a planet that is not one great fire itself me sleepwalking & listening
to an endless loop of madvillainy me dragging my feet & carving ditches around
friendly neighborhood parks staring off & dreaming of a place that is not here a
spooky midwestern return the gs creeping shadow & the change it doth wrought
on the world of the goosebumps theme song the shadow originally a page
fluttering from rl stines briefcase & sneaking up the stone stairs of a too nice house
im saying home is where the heart is & mine lives in fear im saying
i miss what used to scare me & i want that shit back i send a royal decree
to the group chat like hear ye hear ye spooky season is upon us whether
we like it or not i for one rebuke shedding palm fronds and numb attrition
i for one refuse to be left behind i want to get into the spirit this year i want
cider & scary movies & decoration i want to help october find herself again
i want to be cozy goddammit
& i am here to tell you that it is possible to live long enough for the goofy shit
you watched on cartoon network to grow inside you into something divine &
unmelted i wanted to start the season off right so i broke my self-imposed amazon ban
to rent R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It a tv movie
from 2007 about emily osment as cassie keller a goth girl who reads
a cursed nursery rhyme to scare her bitchmade brother & accidentally unleashes
a gruesome beast on her neighborhood & the monster is only real
if you think about it the monster is only real if you give it the power to kill you
the thought of the monster is you & so the monster is you & the power & the killing
is you too & when i say i was obsessed with emily osment the bratty spy
kid with helicopter pigtails the skater bestie from hannah montana (clark kents
anonymous girlhood fame being the subject of its own frenzied devotion) what i mean
is that her bulky emo wig changed something in me i mean the kidpretty
scene shit remains undefeated i mean who gets to be in charge of their own self
possession anyway right all this is just witness & workshop & the endless
discovery of false bottoms built on top of other false bottoms its all
very videodrome & i cant be alone here everybody wants a goth big sister
everybody wants to be the goth big sister everybody gets the boundaries of who
they thought they were shattered for good or ill & ill bet you also have
something youve never been able to get out of your eye

i remember the movie being gnarly when i was 10 cassie living in the same
unsettling twilight zone between ones bus stop & ones house that i was razed in
the same zone stines work was always able to fill with after-school autumnal dread
if we are talking about monster blood & haunted masks & scarecrows walking
at midnight then i am proud to be an ohioan i am in debt to the vibe i must surrender
many pounds of flesh to the evil things i imagined lurked in every shadow & so
i settled in under my grandmothers quilt with a thrifted pumpkin mug full of boozy
cider & watched the thing for the first time in 18 years i was
horrified to discover that the movie sucks it sucks ass cassie is still an icon
mean mugging her classmates & spouting expository trivia about poe & godzilla
& macabre celtic rituals but the movie itself has no ambition to be anything
other than what it is an assembly line programmer built only to fill seasonal
timeslots & cash in on child celebrity & the goosebumps association the apathy on
screen was a heatwave & my apartment a muggy prison every shot came out
of an ikea flatpack you follow the instructions & build it in your head piece by piece
heres where the dollar store halloween dance goes heres where the tobin bell cameo goes
heres where everyone learns a valuable lesson about overcoming fear &
also papa john’s pizza because someone had to pay for this fucking movie
& reader if there were ever any walls between us i need to break them down
now & assure you that i am not above any of this i chart the shifting seasons
of my youth by which happy meal toys i lusted after at the time i
guzzle product same as anyone i schedule my day around the guzzling
no the wound is not the quality the wound is not
the let down the wound is the realization over rolling credits that the dont think
about it shit isnt in the movie all the shit about the monster in the
story being the monster in your head being the monster in your real actual life isnt
actually real its just a tagline a tie-in with a pop single emily osment sings
at the end now a glammed up teenybopper hitting post production high notes
one elaborate costume traded in for another the wound is the unearthed
memory that i was unsatisfied as a child too the one time this character gets to exist
the only time this actress will ever be this person the only time cassie will ever be the
main character of her own story and its awful tragically and predictably subpar
the wound is the injury forgotten the fact that goth emily osment meant
so much to me that the version of this movie i carried for nearly 2 decades
was the version i invented for myself to spend more time with her
the fact of the movie replaced by my own fanfic lullabies the adventures i
cradled myself in as i fell asleep trying to decipher my crush & nascent id

my gaze & the things squirming in my stomach gnawing and trying to get out
i didnt lose my mind i became it infinitely worse the spiked
cider isnt helping the tears pushing against the back of my eyes or the apology
climbing up my throat the homie says the thing about age is that it isn’t subjective
at all & hes right but im sorry this isnt about time but about time spent
you are your own recursive prayers you are your own returning guests
you are the things you conjure to finally get a good nights sleep i write about
memory as a scam i write about gender as a made-for-tv movie i
write about suicide as a fluffy overeager dog & what do you mean
i have to keep going? i fear
i have been alive for too long i havent felt human since emily osment
was appointment television & how strange is it to be on your own island
of care & know with more certainty than you have for anything else that you love
this 87 minute distraction more than the lazy gods who actually made the thing
how strange is it to live long enough for the kids you envied to become
just kids again & break whatever is left of the heart you managed to hold
onto & i just wanted a cozy halloween movie night
its not cope if it becomes canon its not cringe if it doesnt fucking matter
i leave a trail of tiny obelisks everywhere i go
i build delicate monuments & tend to the stone garden accordingly i mourn
all the parts of me that never existed i can mourn anything if i put enough
of myself into it or else remove myself completely
they told me not to think about it & i refused to listen wake me up
when they invent a sexier jar to put my brain into one that begs for shatter
& is transparent enough to legally classify as honest in the meantime ill chew on the
ends of my fingers in fear of the real spirits wrath like nah i just like
testing the durability of my nails some days i like to remember that i am made
up of slime & protein & the commercials i sat through & whatever my
parents parents parents built & scraps of poems fluttering out of my own
unhinged briefcase there is a shadow clinging to my heel & it wont give up
the territory there are shadow puppets dancing on every wall i have ever built & i
cant tell if i am the lack of light or the contorted hands that make it move