The Halloween I remember best
May well have been my first
Five years old
A newcomer to a new town
Flat red boxes on a store shelf
Masks visible beneath cellophane lids
Pre-fab costumes for little kids
Witches and goblins held little magic for me
But animals did
I chose the tiger costume

Cheap plastic mask pressing hard against my face
Pinching, making me sweat
I happily took it off
At the red house across the street
Bright red homemade candied apples
And cups of cider
Everyone collected coins for UNICEF

It was uncomfortable and hard
To inhabit that tiger costume
It didn't feel as magical as I'd imagined In the moment
But it was magical
That tiger inhabited me
Permanently

Fragments of Innocence and Paradise 
So few will coalesce into memory 
Why this one and not that? 
Stochastic? Random? 
Maybe, possibly 
The enduring memories are guideposts, auguries 
Tethering us to Psyche's mysteries 
Daring us to swim deeply into her sea
To find the best and worst of ourselves 

My childhood's favorite color- red
Is everywhere in this memory
Blood, Earth, chthonic vitality
The safety of my mother's protection that night
The safety of the loving community 
The pain of losing that community a few years later 

And the tiger
Solitary, fierce, and nocturnal
The unconscious world of dreams 
I would need that tiger in a few years 
But I couldn't quite find her 
It took a long time 
For me to really embrace my feline nature
The symbols of the psyche
Always drawing us back
To our true selves
If we take the time to look