This poem is about two sisters experiencing an altercation on Halloween from the perspective of one of them. The first image is situated inside the home, and the events begin when the older sister is having an argument with someone else first and the younger sister spooks her. It is not said how she is spooked, but the older sister acknowledges she has “had enough”, alluding that her physical un-wellness pushes her to her breaking limit and yells aggressively at the younger one. For privacy, this sister's name is replaced by a caricature of someone who bullies the smaller children. And instead of regurgitating what the older sister yelled (”NOBODY INVITED YOU TO THIS CONVERSATION!”), the author replaces it with “TIME FOR YOU TO BE UNINVITED…”, as if exclaiming her intent to exorcise this demon from her conversations once and for all.
The second image is where the climax of the story is reached. Though it is not explained in the poem, the two sisters are now outside, away from the rest of the family. The older sister was already there and the younger one follows her to demand a bag of candy from her. The older sister, recognizing this is only a front, attempts to apologize. She is holding a chair with a large blanket that is carrying the bag of candy. But the younger sister is not listening and is also not attempting at weaponizing her hurt as usual and instead chooses to repeatedly say “Give me the candy Give me the candy Give me the candy Give me the candy…”. So the older sister decides to mock her by spitting the younger sister's words verbatim back at her in her attempt to survive this altercation, hoping to leave it physically unscathed, especially by refusing to let go of the chair and give her younger sister what she demanded: to be physically handed the bag of candy. Finally, at her wits end, the younger sister angrily takes the candy herself. Her anger is oversized, the narrator then reveals, because no one was keeping the candy hostage actually, and the candy was always going to end up in the same cauldron. As in, the older sister went outside to look for the cauldron where she was going to place the candy inside herself in the first place.
This sister, the narrator, sets up scene at home, with herself alone in the bed. The use of the adjective “bloody” sets the tone of the poem, but the word was also inspired by the fact that the narrator is recounting a true story and in that story, she was on her period. That is why she was bedridden and alone but -
She alludes to not feeling abandoned “this time”. She does not explain why, but the author can confirm that “last time” was actually 2024 Halloween, when she had no friends and family or her partner to check up on her routinely as she was being checked up on “this time.”
The vagueness is deliberate, however. A phrase like “This time”, with that context in mind, is appreciative and hopeful. A happy conclusion - a message of empowerment and hope. To prevent the poem from taking that direction - the context is purposefully left out. In fact. It's even separated into a single line, the way “This time” can also be used as a warning. As if saying, “You're safe. For now.”
The narrator experiences head pressure because of her menstruation. The author uses this event to warn the reader that something is coming, like the suspenseful music a director plays in a scary movie during a moment of stillness and quiet.
“A nightmare unfolds” serves to not only tell the reader “you will now need to pay attention”, but also acts as a compliment to the bedridden image. The author hopes to inspire the image of the scary situation when you are laying down on the bed, cannot fully fall asleep, and see a scary figure looming at your feet. Lucid dreaming, I believe it's called. The phrase “unfolds” is also scary because it implies an inanimate object is suddenly taking life.
As the narrator enters her nightmare, she switches to the second-person. Often in nightmares, you are your own audience. The author employs her lines like the opening scenes of a movie where young and reckless adults are about to get chomped or slashed because they have unknowingly crossed an all-knowing bitter woman's lines.
The “the” in “the one” is not capitalized. The author admits this was initially an accident. But she keeps it and later decides, that she wants this to stand out. Like a whisper in a crowd, in a scary movie, where only the audience is paying attention to the danger that the messy children are entering.
The narrator is vague again with “Who is watching”. At face value, this suffices to denote that her sister is lurking and paying attention to her without the narrator realizing. To hear and to see are two different set of senses, so this is important to give it in this order. Though it may not be so clear, it's important to the story to note that the scary sister is not actually in the same room. She hears the narrator, but she doesn't “notice her” because she was already keeping “an eye” on her. She was waiting for something already.
The narrator speaks her thoughts as to why her sister watches her. For control because she feels threatened by her. The author takes direct inspiration here for the parallel phrase where control=wanting everything done on her terms and threatened=the feeling you feel when someone challenges you from her sisters own complaints about her. It is not explicit here but - the narrator once helped her sister and her sister's child out by driving her out four hours away to help her find an important document and for her child to see his father. Her sister acted grateful in the moment, but later recounted this story to others that she was hurt that her older sister only helps her when quote: “it's on her own terms only.” The narrator resolves the cognitive dissonance she experienced when she heard this by flipping the coin and seeing the problem that her sister actually has: that her not getting everything HER way is her greatest story plot - HER EPIC. And challenging it is the biggest threat to her sense of safety.