I’ll be honest, Halloween, Samhain, and Allhallowtide have been harder these last few years. In addition to not being able to go anywhere because we live in hell and our official public health policy is “be a Gothic Romance love interest and never leave the house again or die, no one cares, you’re expendable”, the staggering amount of death and loss around us is more than I know how to process, be it intentional plague-spreading, war, genocide, or whatever other bullshit we’ve thought up. So yesterday I couldn’t find it in me to put on a costume and watch a spooky movie or light a candle and acknowledge the dead. I just laid there in a low energy lump listening to an audiobook. I was numb in my grief and too tired to keep grieving or keening or screaming when I know it will never be enough and probably go unheard. I cannot hold the world’s sorrow when too many others won’t hold themselves accountable for any of the reasons that grief and sorrow exists but then turn around and demand either performative happiness or emotional labor to comfort *them* for the things they did and continue to do. Because the grief and fear and guilt we refuse to feel goes somewhere and if we don’t unpack it, it will become our children’s baggage and their children’s and theirs and no amount of book bans will hide our sins from them or spare us their fury when the reckoning finally comes.
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Salt & Iron 