You pick me
out of all the others.
You say I’m
just what you’re looking for.
You bring me
home by leave me alone
on your porch.
In the dying red light,
you hold a knife
serrated and gleaming.
You plunge it
without a word
into my soft center.
You carve and cut
and all the while,
I scream
with no sound.
You open me up
a cadaver
of broken dreams.
You scoop out
my insides
handful by handful,
your brow furrowed
in concentration,
a spatter of me
on your cheek.
And when I am hollow,
and empty,
when you’ve taken
all of me
and left only a shell
of what you said
was ‘just what you were looking for’,
you carve off my scalp
and place a candle
inside of me.
Light pours
from the gaping holes.
You abandon me again
in the foggy dusk.
Grotesque faced children
skip toward me, laughing.
They say,
“What a beautiful, perfect
Jack O’ Lantern”.
