Pumpkin Jinn

And the pumpkin must also be waiting
to turn into something,
watching the clock chop away at the hour (which is also round) with two carving knives.
It feels midnight strike too close every night, pulling in its abdomen
so each hour barely grazes.

                                    It takes a certain kind of content
to paint one’s face blue
at nightfall and orange at dawn. But you do it because you are watching
your life grow too full on the vine.
                                               There are times
when laugh-lines delineate continents, and when it is dark
for what seems like one thousand and one nights (but may be closer to forty)
you weave stories with the garden spiders
about the things that struggle to stay inside while everything else is fighting to escape, like the jinn
in Aladdin’s wonderful lamp, which was gold and fluted
with stretch marks just like yours.