Pumpkin

You gently pulled me by the hand,
your ginger locks glinting in the autumn sun,
fiery as the leaves falling from birch trees,
your skin as pale as their peeling bark.

We were trekking through the pumpkin patch,
our muddy shoes caked with straw
and discarded Caramel Apple Pop wrappers
as we scoured the rows of curling vines.

Finally, the perfect fruit was plucked
from the plant, almost in haste
as we grew too impatient to linger in fields
filled with half-crushed pumpkins and broken leaves.

We dove into the hard shell with a butcher knife,
almost too easily, but didn’t think anything of it
as we pried open the hand-cut top dangling with pulp,
forest green stem snapping with the force of our fists.

Our hands became sticky, fingernails yellowed
as we frantically pulled Day-glo guts from the bowels
of the gourd, making separate piles of goop,
always making sure our own pile was larger.

We scraped the soft flesh with a spatula,
flinging it into a garbage bowl with the seeds,
soon coming to the strange realization
that we were soon left only with a hollow shell.