Did you feel your body change at midnight?

No matter how old I get I still
have the childlike belief in midnights--
I think it began with how my father
had dubbed 'midnight' "the witching hour" in 
all his bed time stories and I had 
been a child who was more likely
to befriend ghosts and witches than to fear them.
I made invisibility potions from glitter glue
and cantaloupe on kitchen floors--
my second belief came from my mother
who called Milano cookies and fresh blondie
brownies the Gow's honored tradition 
of "midnight snacks" to crisin blankets in
sleep with something sweet and heavy
and also an excuse to stay up
for fifteen more minutes with tall glasses
of 1% milk seated across a table from
your mother who was also trying to believe in 
midnight-- that flip-- that switch into something
new-- a midnight is an excuse to believe
in anything-- in ghosts who bake
blondies and my mother who taught the ghosts how
to bake when we're all in bed--
Midnights are "I loved you a whole year
long and where will be this time a year again"
"Will you still want to watch me like a clock?" 
Midnights kiss you like an overdue
apology or remind you that crying can
always be annual if you want to remember. 
I have the ancient affliction 
of trying to read clock faces and 
holding their thin fingers while
they pushed into new days-- I watched for
Christmas and for New Years always
expecting to be enveloped in some sensation 
otherworldly-- and for some reason I feel
like my skin should be different each birthday--
should I be blue or is my hair enough?
should I eat celery for midnights now or pretend to like
Jane Austen? Should I wait for the ghosts
to watch for another clock face to kiss 
tonight or do twenty-year-olds stop trying
to turn invisible with glitter glue and cantaloupe?
Am I supposed to teach the ghosts to make
blondies and show them where the oven is?
I can at least tell you that I do make my
own bed times stories and that witching hours
will always be included. Tonight I will
set out two glasses of 1% milk. Four
raspberry Milano cookies. Two for me.
One for my mother and one for my father
who also watch clock faces and believe
in midnights.