The night kissed the fading day with a whisper: I am death, your mother, from me you will get new life.” — Life After Death: The Book of Answers
Tonight the year exhales.
Marigolds glow like little suns,
guiding our steps across the dark.
Children laugh behind painted masks,
pumpkins open like orange moons.
They call it Trick or Treat—
yet the only trick is illusion,
and the treat, truth.
I stand at the threshold,
one palm on October’s closing,
one on November’s beginning.
Samhain breathes at my back,
Día de Muertos sings in my bones,
and down on the Malecón she rises—
the towering Catrina,
bones gilded, skirt of flame and ocean,
laughter stitched into lace.
She was never meant to mourn the dead,
but to remind the living who they are:
children of this Mexican earth,
radiant beings wearing bones,
dancing their names back into light.
She is not death, but the grace of it—
reminding us beauty and bones
belong to the same dance.
Far beneath the waves, Atlantis remembers—
not drowned, but dreaming.
Not a ruin—a seed.
We do not gather for endings,
but to change our costumes.
Life is not the opposite of death;
birth is,
and life holds them both—
inhale, exhale,
beginning, returning, beginning again.
I call the radiant witness I Am—
awareness wearing our names.
Bodies shift like seasons,
minds weather like oceans,
yet consciousness rides the molecules like a horse,
then steps down laughing—
still herself, still bright.
Death is not punishment,
it’s the pause between frames
that lets the movie move.
In that sacred off,
no one is lost.
The light only changes rooms.
Atlantis teaches this:
a civilization can go under
without going away.
The song submerges,
the singers rise elsewhere—
strumming the same original tune.
So tonight, I lay the table
for all who came before
and all who will come after—
mothers, fathers,
friends and lovers,
faithful animals guarding our hearts.
We light candles,
scatter petals, pour water, break bread.
We whisper names remembered and names forgotten.
Each one flares like a match,
reminding the dark of its purpose—
to cradle the light while it changes shape.
Death is no loss,
only relocation.
A change of classroom,
not the fall of the student.
What is real cannot be threatened;
what is unreal was never born.
Death is the central theme
from which all illusions stem.
Is it not madness to think
of life as being born, aging,
losing vitality, and dying in the end?
So we mourn as gardeners, not grievers—
watering the soil with gratitude,
planting our dead as seeds of beginning.
Stillness.
Silence.
Spaciousness.
These are the true altars.
Take a candle.
Name one soul who taught you love.
Say, You live on in radiant transformation.
The body leaves while the soul shines eternally.
Then whisper the oldest truth:
I am the Universe
a humble belonging, a boundless connection.
On this night of veils,
I bless your faces.
On this night of bones,
I bless your marrow.
May your departed walk with you as courage,
as laughter,
as wonder.
We honor what leaves
by loving what remains.
We honor death
by beginning again.
Come in, beloveds.
The porch light is on.
The table is set.
The dawn is already on its way.
