Retirement in a word?
If I may:
A proepilogue?

Awkwards perhaps, maybe even a bit morbid.
But it's more succinct than my go-to Tennyson:
"'T is not too late to seek a newer world".

3/3
I finally said to Alfred, guilt edging my words, my words mangling metaphors: "What shined once may shine again. But don't leave things unplugged for too long."

Alfred left my house shaking his head. I was still his eccentric neighbor.

[Thanks, Uncle Duke, for photos & stories that inspire.]

2/3
We brought Tux home. He was so happy; his antics lit up our home. In the livingroom or kitchen his soft humming filled the air.

But later, years later, LEDs became the rage. Tux didn't like being put into a backroom. When we'd pat the switch on, the glare was so intense. Nothing like before.

"Why do you keep this old thing around?" Alfred switched on the lamp & received a jolt. A little nip on the fingers. The lamp was not amused.

"Sorry about that." Should I tell Alfred that when we first found Tux abandoned on a sidewalk, he seemed so cute w/ his filaments flickering curiously.
1/3

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Clyde, however, is something completely different!"

Yes. I'm on T**ttXr for the (Mount)doom-scrolling, and Bluesky for the shire-strolling.
Thanks for asking.
Might you be enjoying this azure site?

I'm sorry that this is so stressful.

3/3 #AScareADay Palumbo "Bleeding Hearts"
...Then love returns, perhaps differently, maybe unexpectedly.

Unfortunately, the botanical analogy portends a continuing cycle.

In the interests of enjoying how the seeds of love are being planted, I appreciate that Palumbo ended the story at that point.

2/3 #AScareADay Palumbo
Love might be reborn in a manner paralleling the life cycles of our botanical friends.
Perennial plants grow from seeds, bloom, weather adversity, wither, but regrow later.
We blossom in love, basking in its heat; they leave; we fall into sadness w/ bitter winds blowing....

3/3 #AScareADay Nadler, Howard "Portrait"
Sal retains self-awareness during his entrapment in the painting. He's "an observer of the observers", but unable to speak or escape.
Sal has the subjectivity of self-consciousness, but lacks the agency to act (a trait of subjectivity) b/c he is a painting.

2/3 #AScareADay Nadler, Howard "Portrait"
Sal is now trapped in the painting & visible as himself. He sees what happens in the world outside the canvas.
Sal sees the monster engaging in what the painter views as his own life.

What might be a Halloweenish interpretation of the story?

I've not read a story quite like this. It's interesting b/c readers need to piece together the story arc via the scant info provided in the different sources, which are further informed by the biblio writer's choices of what to extract. Then I as a reader must fill in the gaps via my imagination.

4/4 #AScareADay Sen "Ten Excerpts"
I find it interesting that the student creating the bibliography is named "Ranita Gaur". Perhaps she is a Ratnabari, too, and is researching her own roots, both familial and cultural.
The short story ends. The author doesn't indicate Ranita's personal reflections.

3/4 #AScareADay Sen "Ten Excerpts"
Ashanti Gaur (text #10), another Ratnabari, expands the qualities of a particular culture to a global scale & in so doing seemingly adds IMO a metaphorical facet. The women cannibals fight against patriarchal power & even sacrifice themselves for other women (#8).

2/4 #AScareADay Sen "Ten Excerpts"
But further research seems unlikely. As Shalini Gaur, a Ratnabar descendant living in the West writes, Ratnabari are not given a voice (text # 9), and they cannot return to the island, b/c they are "too alien now for the home of our great-grandmothers" (#9).

2/2
#AScareADay Stubbs "Uncontainable"
Rochelle knows inexplicable things that others cannot perceive or else refuse to believe b/c of appearances: e.g. Good Wife Henny re: the kid's deaths.
Later, Rochelle struggles w/ sickness, the result of which is revealed horrifically to Kate at Henny's house.

Espada's poem is quite interesting & evocative.
Perhaps this poem conveys History's (w/ a capital H) judgement.
At the very least, justice is meted out supernaturally to Oñate w/ human intervention in the natural realm.
The perpetrator of the cutting might have said:
I came.
I sawed.
I judged.

2/2 #AScareADay Espada "Juan De Oñate"
Oñate's spirit reexperiences, inescapably, the howling pain after an earlier statue's foot was cut off in a fashion paralleling his actions against Indigenous people centuries ago.
For such inhumanity, his spirit will be punished repeatedly, perhaps eternally.