Midnight Pumpkin

Midnight Pumpkins

Tweed woven rug splayed across the floor
like a frog ripe for dissection,
fragile heart beating under translucent skin,
clad in cloven combat boots.

Foreheads plowed in swiggly rows of
alternating trenches, alight upon
black-bean eyes. “It’s harvest time
my dear, and it’s not looking good.”

But she clomps on, grasping for the carrot at
the end of the hedonic treadmill,
adapting to three dollar long islands and
leaving a trail of lip-stick smudges like breadcrumbs

to follow back to gingerbread houses and
the warm, sweet sight of welcome mats and
the look on her mother’s face when she brought home
crayon-colored tales of happily ever after.

A pity though—the doorbell’s wrung
and it was the milkman not Prince Charming
while the fluorescent lighting reveals a dance
floor swathed in strewn cigarettes

where the clock has already struck midnight.

Now all she can do is stay in of Friday night and smile
while the townspeople grab their pitchforks and
start setting up the noose. Because,

as her daughter told her,
“It’s a Tuesday and everyone knows you’re supposed to wear pink.”