Whenever i got to carve pumpkins it was always at a friends house and technically i never got to carve them at all. The problem is when you do something like that with a friend at their house and help them carve their pumpkin, they obviously always wanted to do the fun part: making the design and executing it how they want. What they never wanted to do was scoop out the guts so that's where i got to help. Maybe it is the grossest or most boring part but i could always count on being called on to do at least that. So i would get to work, making the initial incision and grasping at the slimy innards.
This year you finally broke. Realized demonizing pumpkins with faces was too trivial a matter to fight about anymore. It really doesn't feel real at all, the sudden shift in opinions and nonchalantness towards the things you used to so desperately tear any shreds of from our grasp. Nonetheless we wash the dirt off of their bodies and move them to the porch where we plan to decorate with their corpses. I tell you the scooping is what i'm best at, grab a knife, and get to work.
It's familiar but still feels wrong, like i should place myself between it and you in hopes that you won't notice the sawing motions. Because if you see, you'll imperatively ask what i'm doing as you pry the gourd from my grip and I'm left there with the knife, the entrails, and the knowledge that punishment is to come. It has to be a test, right? Everything i've ever been allowed to do was carefully scripted by you and everything i've ever been allowed to own is actually yours. You can take it all away at any moment and you remind me often. Forever indebted not just for the gifts, but even the necessities, that you made me ask for.
As i puncture the top and open it up for the disembowelment you watch me the way you always do, implacably. I'm just going through the motions now, pulling out one handful of gore at a time and placing it in the trash. You let me know after every action that i should do it differently. I keep scraping.
