Something Wicked to Lincoln Street Comes

Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more. - Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

The book was a door that winter. 

and I opened it with cold hands,

the radiator ticking, then stopping,

snow leaning into the glass

of my room on Lincoln Street.

It was 1975.

I was old enough to be quiet,

young enough to believe

what waited once the latch gave way.

I lay under an afghan

my mother had crocheted,

loops worked one by one

in evenings like this.

Its weight was uneven, familiar.

The book rested heavy in my palms.

Each page resisted, then yielded,

as if it knew what it carried.

The carnival crept closer

sentence by sentence -

mirrors, smoke, a music

too thin to trust.

Boys my age stepped forward

and saw themselves changed.

Time bent.

Promises were made that couldn’t be kept.

I read slower, listening for the house.

Down the hall, the house kept watch.

My father coughed once and stopped.

Pipes answered.

My mother stood somewhere near water,

listening the way you listen

when listening is work.

A newborn breathed,

and the rest of us learned to move

around that sound.

The book asked its questions quietly:

What would you trade?

What would you look at twice?

I glanced at the window,

my own face held there,

half-lit, half-gone,

safe because I stayed where I was.

The house shifted -

a laugh cut short,

a door closed carefully.

No one said much.

Everyone stayed.

The ordinary held,

though it felt newly earned.

The pages warned of bargains,

of sweetness that cost too much.

But downstairs, soup simmered.

Coats dried.

My parents exchanged glances

instead of fear.

The danger in the book

had to wait its turn.

I read until evening thickened,

until the heat shut off

and the book closed heavier than it opened.

I didn’t have a word for it then,

but I felt it:

that darkness travels easily,

and love does not -

it stays by being done.

Years later, I still hear that winter:

a house measuring the night

by one small breath,

keeping watch without ceremony,

while something wicked passed by outside,

uninvited,

and moved on.

GBS jr

2012