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"Calavera... Calavera..."
Nathan Marquam

“Hold the dark holiday in your palms, 
Bite it, swallow it and survive,

 Come out the far black tunnel of  el Día de Muerte,
 And be glad, ah so glad you are… alive!” 

- Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree
i.  

I’ll ride the wind like a bicycle 
over rocks, through ravines
until I find you. You look strange,
funny strange in this moonlight,
faded as the siren’s low wail. 
I follow you into a house
of  old wood and black marble.
Of  course it’s haunted. Why else 
would you lead me here? Father,
time means nothing. I’ll chase you 
up Roman cathedrals and down 
the streets of  Mexico until the earth
opens to give you back. It has to. 
We can’t have Halloween without you.  

ii.

No, you are not gone. You are in pieces, 
a split-sugar skull I pull apart like taffy. You 
shatter in sharp bursts across my tongue, 
live a moment longer. I pluck seconds 
and hours from the ends of  my years, 
spend them missing you. Your face sinks 



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in my mind like a pumpkin’s, curled in 
on its own expression. Loving you is a soft 
dissection, candlelight spilled across 
frozen ground, brought to wreckage. 
I scan the treelines for your smile, 
comb handfuls of  stars for a kitestring, 
beg it to take me to you. 

iii.

Shimmering, like swimming up 
from the bottom of  someplace dark, 
I see you. You climb a tree 
with no leaves, a River Styx tower 
that dangles a thousand faces, 
but the crowd of  lights rejects me.
Blue and translucent, you say 
I am too much my skin, the dark 
shreds of  bark that bite it. Your fingers 
encircle my wrist, and I see your smile. 
Hear the familiar rasp of  your voice. 
Kick the bark away. Learn to let go.