My mask hung on the bedroom chair
With yellow teeth and stringy hair.
By day it looked like painted trash.
By night it made my sister dash.
The rubber smell was hot and strange.
My voice came out all dull and changed.
I liked the way one piece could hide
My plain old face and all inside.
The road was dark, the leaves were dry,
The moon looked stuck up in the sky.
Porch lights made little islands glow
Where witches, ghosts, and cowboys go.
A man down two houses from ours
Had fake graves stuck among the flowers.
A wind-up cat with red bulb eyes
Kept jerking when the cord would rise.
Near ten o’clock I took it off
And heard my real breath, small and soft.
My face was mine again, near warm,
Yet part of me still wore the form.