Why We Make Our Own October

We don't cater to thoughts
Of what months should be
After all, what if we feel
Patriotic in April
Rather than in July?

What if we feel romantic
Six months after Valentine's Day
Or flag-ish in November?

This

This is why we make our own October

On the first day, we make promises
That we know we won't keep
And see who can come up with the best one

'This month, I'll climb Mount Kilimanjaro!
'This month, I'll produce a child!'
'This month, I'll choreograph a ballet!'

Then we toast to these lies
Knowing they're lies
But thinking maybe...

Maybe...they're not

We dress up in evening gowns
All of us, evening gowns
Boys included

There is no gender in October
There is no sexuality
There is no creed

We're not sure we have a creed
During the other months of the year either
But we like denouncing it anyway

'NO CREED IN OCTOBER!'

We toast to this too
And we toast to dead celebrities
And bad ideas
And ex's who've gotten fat
And broken appliances
And battered furniture
And drugs
And quitting drugs
And each other

On the fifth of the month
We run around the neighborhood
Shouting out things dramatically
And dancing around in the streets
As if a war has ended

We go to each of our neighbor's houses
Convince them to come out with us
Take them onto the sidewalks
Out from their apartments
And their stores
And from behind their cash registers

We spin them around
Until they're nearly passed out
Then we stop
Give them a chicken stick
And take them home

This is our good deed day
This is our favorite deed

Exposing nearby strangers
To blissful insanity

On the tenth day of the month
We have a yard sale
But due to the absence of a yard
We have it on our roof
And we sell all the things
We've acquired during the year
That we don't really need

Of course, nobody is honest
About what they need
And what they don't
So we end up buying new things
Just to resell them
So that we won't judge each other

Then we end up buying each other's new things
And leaving with more than we came with

Still, when the weather is nice
It's lovely to sit out there
Surrounded by materialism
And let the leaves fall on our tables
And our piles of store-bought happiness

On the fifteenth day of the month
We drive to the beach
And celebrate America
By playing Whitney singing the National Anthem
And wearing our flag t-shirts
And having good old-fashioned American sex
While wrapped up in at least eight beach towels
Because it's usually freezing
By the fifteenth day of the month

On the twentieth day of the month
We agree to babysit
For every child we know

We fill our apartment with bouncy balls
Yo-yo's, wind-up toys, over-sized dolls
Phantom tollbooths, robots, matchbox cars
And everything else we can think of
To make our apartment a wonderland

Then when the children show up
They break everything
And demand popcorn
Which we don't have

So they tie us up
Lock us in the closet
And slip us food under the door
Every hour on the hour

When their parents show up
We tell them the children were wonderful
Partly because what's done is done
And party because we know they're doomed
But why worry them now?

On the twenty-fifth day
We dress up like other people
People we never want to see again
And we go into their heads
To banish them from ours

'I'm my boss'
'I'm my fourth grade teacher'
'I'm my mother'
'I'm your mother too'

When the evening is over
We take off our costumes
And go back up to the roof
To play with the items left up there
From the yard sale

We find ourselves up there more and more
As the nights come on faster
And the days dwindle moreso than pass

We go up there and we talk
About whatever pops into our heads
And we eat food out of plastic containers
And we put on each other's clothes
And we laugh at old jokes
The origins of which we can't remember

And we watch October slip away
And another month come along
And we think of how we're going to make this one

We think of how we're going to make this one last