October 30: Play in the dark . . .

Play in the dark,
crawl under the bed,
keep still,
quiet,
the monster won't find you
tonight.
Not when the radio plays loudly,
glasses break in the night,
people shout,
cars screech away,
and you are
alone,
all alone in the house.
The stair creaks.
Night terror begins.

Nightmare before Christmas Pumpkin
Jimmy Snell (2005 Flickr)

As OctPoWriMo nears the end of the month, today's poetry prompt is to explore the dark side, to play in the dark. We're asked to write about "the hard stuff." Halloween is too close; it's too tempting to add a little horror story. I'd rather write sweetness and light, as in the light at the end of a long tunnel, the light that brightens each morning, the light within we share each time we do good in the world. But I can do dark too.