pumpkin

I want to scoop out the stale seeds
of my skull, leave them outside
like bones to rot during winter,
where they’ll be dusted
by a light layer of frost
to camouflage the numbness
I feel on days when I am still,
flesh carefully decomposing.

They can live like the pumpkins
my mother let decay after Halloween
when I was twelve. At first, they will be nothing
but trash thrown to the dirt to die
among the weeds. With the Spring winds,
they will return stronger, sturdier, an oasis
of orange that grew
too wild, too unpredictable.

my thoughts sprout upon me so suddenly
that I can never remove the seeds in time.
instead I sit patiently and wait
for them to leave, only to discover
that they too are suffocated under
a soil they don’t belong in, pounding
to escape like the glass in my head that stabs
my cerebrum, slowly oozes out my spirit.

If only the grains of dirt that fuse together
to make glass could disconnect like the kind
in movies that disintegrate into sugary crystals
when broken. Then the glass I stare through
as I study the brick walls of my apartment
could never wound me, would be all
but dust dissolving, pieces of nothingness
left behind to rot like an old pumpkin.