The Last Porch Light
I was a Halloween girl before I had words for it.
I know this because of the leaves. Every fall, I’d stand outside with my hands out and try to catch them before they hit the ground. Leaves that had never touched the earth were special, unspoiled, still holding something. I’d save them. I didn’t know why. I just knew that when the air turned cold and the world went orange and gold, something in me woke up.
1999 was a good year. I was a Pajama Girl for Halloween — pigtails, cute pjs, glittery makeup dusted across my face. Simple. Perfect. The air that night had that specific cold-burn quality. You know when the air that fills your lungs burns a little? You know the feeling. You’ve felt it too. That’s why you’re here.
Earlier that fall, my school held a fall festival. I went in a poodle skirt. My mom wore a fall-themed vest over a denim shirt. That kind of outfit only existed in that specific era. She let me wander the festival mostly unsupervised because what trouble could I possibly get into at a school Fall Festival?
Five cakes. I won five cakes in the cake walk. Five. My mom, chronically on a diet and deeply unprepared for this outcome, stood there looking at me and my mountain of cakes with an expression I can only describe as betrayed. What are we gonna do with five whole cakes? I had no answer. I just knew I had won them and they were mine. I beamed with pride as she rolled her eyes. Hahaha!
That’s the thing about back then. There was room for that kind of chaos. Room to wander. Room to win five cakes with no plan for what comes next.
Halloween night was the same way. Our parents sent us out with a pillow case and a general direction and trusted us to come back eventually. No texts. No check-ins. Just go! We’d hit our neighborhood, then the next one, then the one after that, walking until our legs gave out and our backs ached from hauling what felt like twenty pounds of candy. When we finally dragged ourselves home, we’d dump it all on the floor and get to work. Sort. Trade. Negotiate. Eat until our bellies ached. Fall asleep on the couch watching whatever Halloween special happened to be on.
Nobody was performing it. Nobody was documenting it. It was just ours.
I don’t go to fall festivals anymore. I don’t know if it’s age or cynicism or just the way social media turned every hayride and pumpkin patch into a photo opportunity, but the novelty is gone for me. Everything is crowded now. Everything is staged. Fall has become an aesthetic. It has a filter and a color palette now. A very dulled down version of what it used to be. Now it’s a carefully curated moment designed to be seen rather than felt.
Somewhere along the way, Halloween stopped being something you lived and became something you produced.
I think about the last time we didn’t know that yet. The last Halloween before everything changed. Our parents sitting on the porch handing out candy until the bowl ran dry. Us running from house to house in the dark, no phone in our pocket, no one tracking us, just the cold air and the jack-o-lanterns and the porch lights glowing orange down the street. There was so much color!
One by one, those lights went out.
We went to the last house with the last porch light on…and then we went home, and went to sleep, and when we woke up the world had started to lose its color.
I’ve been trying to find my way back to that porch ever since.
That’s what this is.
Welcome to Last Porch Light.