Clown Skeleton

author’s note:

What if every day was Halloween?


CLOWN SKELETON

While sneaking around backstage
after class one afternoon
I pulled a curtain in a dingy dusty storeroom
and found a skeleton standing at a blackboard.
No lower jaw, so no death grin.

To calm my sudden shock
I clapped a silly baseball cap on that bone head.

I would mock the specter that mocks us.

But then another idea came to me:
I should confront my fear.
I would confront the unknown
by peering into those dark eye sockets.

Maybe I’d sense the unseen
the great mystery—
the invisible realm.

But no—
though I stared into those empty pools
until my eyes burned
I felt only a dull negative:
the absence of life.

However
my neck hairs did rise
when I posed this question:

might I likewise end up
abandoned in a backroom?—
a clown set of bones—
just another blank line?

Stunned by the thought
I walked away from that encounter
with the clock ticking in my head again
but louder, louder this time—
stirring a sense of urgency in me.

I needed to fill that line
with something…something
that might last after my last breath.

mythsteps · Clown Skeleton

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