i.
If Halloween should fall on a Monday, put on pantyhose and a blond bob on Friday. In an alleyway, after sun down, draw a pentagram in chalk with three friends (2 of whom are now specters ignored in the aisles of the lcbo and Walmart). A body dressed in sitcom drag for each sacred corner. Chant “bees!”, “dead dove” and “I’d rather be dead California than...” while a garage door opens and releases a bulldog and its small Portuguese owner. Scatter back to your house for more wine. 6 months later, bring her cauldron of soggy fruit salad to a queer bar on Dundas West. It will close a few months later. Curses like her rarely die. You will sit in an actual communist daughter’s home library holding a board game we should’ve turned into a makeshift ouija. Modernized spirit photography will capture the moment in a profile picture archived on Facebook. Drink old Milwaukee as healing tincture: on the loading dock behind a high school, on a porch rammed with bicycles and theatre props, at the back of the Henhouse while waiting for Popeyes. Go for endless shrimp with your four corners before belting out KoRn at XOXO gayraoke. You & I will puke a little in our mouths. This will signal the beginning of the end of _______. One long summer of torrential rains (God`s colonic turning into a tsunami of (un)holy stank water) and we’re left singing Madonna’s ‘frozen’ in the basement of my old house. Our bellies will be bubbling seas of a stripmall buffet, we spelled good riddance in deep fried chicken wings and torpedo shrimp. Throw the fortune cookie out with the fire (island) & brimstone (butches), our gay community is eroding.
ii.
If, 6 years later, Halloween should fall again on a Monday - buy pantyhose, 2 for $1 from Honest Ed’s and cut a new friend’s wig on Saturday. This will ensure synthetic platinum shards will trail the city for years to come. Unlike glitter, finding wig hair in January under a thick layer of ice or couch is the best kind of omen. Tan in its glow.
Alex Hall received her BA in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto. Her poems have appeared in Waccamaw Journal, Underblong Journal and Dyke Queen Zine/Hello Mr Magazine. She lives and works as a dog walker in Toronto, Ontario.