Pumpkin Seeds

 

We are all together again

on Halloween eve

just like always, me

up to my elbows in pumpkin guts,

you and your dad

at the table, seated

before spread out newsprint.

 

Divorce is irrelevant

when there are pumpkins to carve.

I attack another 

with the largest kitchen knife I own,

in imitation of a bad horror movie.

How pale and vulnerable

my wrists are. I am crazy

 

for the seeds. The seeds

are the only reason I carve pumpkins

anymore. Well, and to see what you—

at your age—might make. Interwoven

throughout one stringy womb,

I find sprouted seeds. This one,

pregnant with fledgling

 

jack-o-lanterns of the future;

lit and grimacing faces that will

never be, maniacal grins for porches

we can only imagine. Then, I tell you

a story: the autumn you were in utero, 

my first trimester, I craved pumpkin seeds,

and your dad brought them to me by the bowlful.

 

In fact, you are probably 95 percent pumpkin seed

I say and you say, I don’t really like them!

We three, around our table, laugh. Then,

we light candles and place them inside the hollows

we have made. Just like us, they flicker and wink

at decay. Cleaned and carved by loving hands,

the very faces of creation.