By Jude Lee ’26
Every year the chilly whisper of autumn blows through town,
Turning the sky a morose gray,
And the leaves the shades of blood, pumpkin, and brown-
The whisper grows louder by day,
Awakening the forgotten spirits of history,
And bringing out the monsters to play-
But the scariest creature is neither bloodsucking nor gory,
In fact it hides best when in sight,
And it only knows all the secrets behind the story
It’s me.
I know all the secrets to your story.
I see all, I know that:
Every dozen moons you turn the lights down
And disguise your town
Hide behind your mask
Fill up and down another flask
Prance with the ghouls
That usually keep house in your souls
Remember your new neighbors in Salem?
As a warm welcome you would hang em’
Hushed hiders inhabit his hidden home
Twenty-five months was too short for Anne’s book to become a tome
And twin brothers who stood tall and proud
Knocked off their feet onto the ground
You would rather tear a nation apart than
Let your brother be free again
Create a means to hurt,
Become a destroyer of an earth
Detest your opposition
Make neighbors your competition
Relish in violence
Leave the weak in silence
Glorify a sin
Display your inner djinn
Rather live a life to cheat and lie
Than one you can justify
Mr King of horror, why would anyone read instead
About bloodied sewers from children without a head
Over an act of intimacy?
Why must it be such a controversy?
You scare yourself.
So you create your own greater horrors to justify yourself.
You say “nevermore,
Their tales they told they’re tabescent!”
But your sins are evermore
In the end these emissions
Of things that lurk in the dim corridors
Are all fragments of your imaginations
All these horrors
May scare him and her and he and she
But nothing is scarier than what you see in your mirrors.
