subscription to my depression: halloween edition

subscription to my depression: halloween editon

Nico Léger

every month my depression, like a dead beat with a court mandate, mails me pages from my childhood tiger beat magazines. cheaply, withholds posters of celebrity teens and stickers better left never used. last month, only pasted in scraps of newspaper obituaries, people i never met now haunting my doorstep, where the post is habitually neglected. this month, i decide to get the mail before the trick-or-treaters come. find, not a quiz for which my chemical romance member i should date based on eyeliner aesthetic, but a recipe on coping this october.

ingredients:

a hyperfixation like glow in the dark slime. never to be exposed in daylight, all ooze and thick to hide my body when my mind becomes nothing but a cemetery for to-do lists, and zombie face paint is a new skincare routine. these days, i feel like i’m the only one. this is not an outbreak.

a cheap pumpkin carving kit that comes with a knife so dull it gets caught in pumpkin skin until the fruit rots.

my therapist, who is grateful the knife is in its safety guard. who says i should accept candy from strangers because there’s more to life than my tongue falling victim to razor blades and shards of glass. that chocolate would taste delicious if only i were to put it in my mouth.

the memory of how mom bled to sew a cheerleading outfit. how M was already a football player and there could be no duplicates, my brother and i, not the grady daughters -- the shining’s mistaken twins. wonder at what point during the night the pom-poms became cylinder blocks chained to my wrists.