Pale Child

by Royal Rhodes

Photo by Yvonne Hanson

Clusters of costumed children
trail along with guardian parents
who point small flash-light beams
at the edge of the bare street
and the hillocks of raked leaves
in the bare-knuckle chill of this night.
The sky, but for the lone moon,
is like a canopy of floating crows
extending their oily black wings.
The voices and bursts of laughter
would startle hosts of horseshoe bats,
if there were any in this thin air.
The usual mix of heroes and ghouls
come to the door, drawn by the light,
and hold out bags for the wrapped sweets,
politely demanding treats, or saying nothing.
Each time I went to the door, left ajar,
I tried to identify the neighbors,
those who passed in the daylight to school,
not far away, and its noisy playground.
What was odd to me was the pale child --
that one, over there by the old tree.
Her face and arms were chalky white,
and her unpigmented eyes kept staring.
She looked so much like the little girl
I knew long ago, whose fragile wrists
were crisscrossed with veins, a Delft-blue.
And who never smiled, just like this one.
At each invasion of those who knocked,
chanting their sing-song, urgent threats,
I looked for her. She would disappear
and then reappear or stand in the shadow,
but never came up to the open door.
Long after the lights were put out
and I lay awake in my cold bed,
I thought I heard a delicate scratching,
a tapping on the door's vulnerable glass,
the quiet tapping of a child's hand.