Should I Catch Fire By Morning | The Matchbook 10.31.25
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I have a strange brain. This is a fact you know by now, you who have been here anything longer than 10 minutes. It sponges from life, from love, from sorrow, joy, and everything in between these bookends. Sometimes, it picks up strange ideas from strange places.
Today’s poem, another from my brand new book, The Never Was, was born from a very, very strange place, and as it felt a little bit of a Halloweener type poem, I suppose today is a great day to dive into the inspiration for it. Why not? A treat for all you tricksters.
Speaking of, I still have a few copies of the extremely limited edition signed + personalized The Never Was hanging around here for anyone that wants to get a super rad gift way ahead of the holiday season.
A while back, Lady G and I were watching another horror series, a follow up to the really weird and really fun Haunting of Hill House, and Haunting of Bly Manor, called Midnight Mass. The show, if you’ve not yet seen it, is bizarre and goes a lot of places, but that’s not the point here. The point is, there was an image at the end of the series that stuck with me, that was an odd bit of poignancy in a genre not really known for that kind of grace.
While I don’t want to spoil the series for anyone who hasn’t yet watched but wishes to, I can just say that the first few lines of the first stanza came from that image. From a warm sunrise rising over a cold ocean, from a beam of light that comes and fades someone “into chalk dust and ghost letters after erasing.”
This poem is about loving someone so much, that if all you are given is one night, this night, this Halloween night, you’d call it enough. That to share even a moment of “twisted limbs and breath passed back and forth” is worth it, is worth everything.
I know this love, I am lucky to call this love that love, to call my wife the constant in the storm tossed sea of life.
I know a time will come where I will not know what will be in the hours after I go, the minutes, days, the months beyond when I begin again. I know it’s coming, and I know that I believe that this makes these moments, these memories, between now and then all the sweeter. As the Buddhist koan says, “The cup is already broken.”
This poem, born from a scene with a sunrise on a small boat, on the explosion of light that ended a life, is just me, shouting a reminder to myself to be not afraid of the darkness that will one day come. Treasure the squeeze of a hand in the deep dark of a room shared, the squeeze that lets you know that not only do they agree, but that they are there. Just there.
I love sharing these little insights with you, and I hope you enjoy them too.
Here, for all you who dig it, is the spoken word audio version of me reading it how my brain heard it.
Happy Halloween, Happy Samhain, I hope it’s haunted in all the best ways.
I love you all, be good.
From within
It is there
Never gone
Always there
That which we seek
Was always there
So close
And yet not found
If only we are open
While waiting for a knock
Little do we know
We need not look so far
It always was within
No need for shade or shine
But from within
Others help us find it
When we see it in their eyes
That is just a reflection
Of what we have inside
They are only a reminder
Of what we mask or hide
Unless we set it free
Forever thankful every time you write and share something that makes me feel less alone. Less like a freak. I haven't seen this at all but still relate. How beautiful it is to love someone if even for only one night.