Summer Pumpkins

 It is my favorite night of the year. Every year. And no Halloween night had ever been more magical than the one and only year that I spent it with you. You helped us get into our dresses and our wigs and our crowns. You lifted us into and out of the car in our extravagant hoopskirts. And you held my hand as we followed behind my babies through the neighborhood collecting candy and walking through homemade haunted garages. There had never been such a Halloween night for me, as we walked and talked about how next year you would dress up with us too, and every year thereafter. The October air felt lovely and hopeful for the first time in a long time. I loved you so much. You told me that you loved me too.

There were pumpkins on the porch. You bought one of them. My 8-year-old daughter painted it like Pennywise the clown. There were two others, painted to look like a scene from Stranger Things, and another painted as The Nightmare Before Christmas. After the most amazing Halloween night, the pumpkins remained on the porch until after Thanksgiving. There wasn't much left of them by then. I took them behind the house to the pumpkin graveyard. But not before a little seed could burrow itself in the dirt between the sidewalk and the flower bed. 

A tiny pumpkin plant showed itself in late November. It excited everyone. A pumpkin plant growing from a crack in the sidewalk in the fall. The freeze at Christmas time killed it though. The Christmas where I did not even get a present. Maybe it was foreshadowing, and I did not know it then. It feels very ominous when I think about it now. It grew from pure happiness and did not stay for long. It died when the cold came. While it was there it made me so happy though. Then it was gone, unable to stand the winter.

But it came back. In March it came back. You were different by then, though. I did not feel so loved anymore. I wanted to. And I held on to the way you made me feel when everything was so new. I told myself that you would be the way that you were in the beginning if I was just a little bit more patient and let things fall into place. I had adored you for 10 years and I finally had you. It was so surreal. I began to think that maybe I really wasn't meant to have happiness. I knew that you were my person and that we were meant to be. You told me the same. But you no longer would tell me that by the spring. You stopped talking about the big plans we had made to grow old together and the places that we would see. I no longer could close my eyes and dream of seeing the Northern Lights at your side. But God, did I still love you. 

You were so excited to see the tiny plant. You told me about a vine that grew in your yard one summer, and how you had watched and waited for pumpkins to grow in July. Yours died in the heat that year. You were hopeful that this one would make the pumpkins that you never got to grow. Every time that you came to visit, we would admire the growing vine, and how big it was getting. We laughed at the way that it eventually covered the entire walkway and had to be stepped over to get out of the house. We waited for the blooms grow summer pumpkins.

You turned cold. You became distant. You did not make much time anymore to come and see us. In the beginning you would make the long drive for one night if it was all you had. But now there were always better things for you to do besides be with us. I became the last to know anything, if I knew it at all. I did not understand. I just wanted so much to be near you. I loved your laugh, and the way your smile reached your eyes. I loved watching dumb comedies and lying next to you. The way that you felt like the home that I always wanted and never had. All I ever wanted from you was your presence and your time. But you did not want to give that anymore. Still, all I did was pour all of my love into you. I did not even love myself. I gave it all to you.

Although I felt you slipping away and could not make sense of it, I would still tell you about the pumpkin vine. You would act interested, just as you would act interested in me. You would never tell me that you did not really love me, or that you did not really care about the amazing vine. But I would tell you anyway. I sent you pictures when two tiny gourds began to grow in the magnificent vine that stretched all across the sidewalk.

You never told me that you did not love me anymore. You just stopped telling me that you did. I felt it already, but I did not believe it. In my heart I knew that the universe had brought us together at the perfect time in each of our lives and I would not accept that you had changed your mind. You were meant to be my life's reward. You were the one who promised to never hurt me and never leave me. You told me you had always loved me. Even 10 years ago when we could not tell each other and could not have each other.

You told me that now you did not know what you wanted anymore. You said you needed time. But I knew that was not really what you were saying. I have been through this before. I just did not think I would ever go through this with you. Now you decided that you needed the time that I encouraged you to take 10 months ago before my children loved you. You said back then that you did not need time, because I was all you ever wanted since you laid eyes on me. You said back then that you could not even picture your life without me in it. I became angry at you for changing your mind. For breaking my heart. 

Still the pumpkins grew. And still I showed them to you as if you cared. You said you had always wanted to grow one. I grew one for you, love. I grew two for you. 

You stopped calling. You did not care that my heart had died. I no longer woke up to see your good morning. I no longer heard your voice before work or before bed. I no longer told you all about my day throughout the day and I no longer knew anything of yours. You broke the girls' hearts too. They watched me cry and they cried with me. They did not understand why you would tell them that you loved them and wanted to take care of them only to disappear one day without even telling them goodbye. They felt silly for ever trusting your words. They felt that maybe they could never be loved either. They are stronger than me. They were proud of the summer pumpkins that you would never see.

The pumpkins decorated the porch in my summer of heartbreak. When I could not get out of bed for days at a time, they sat. They reminded me of you. The vine began to wither. But I could not pull it up. It was here the last time that you were here. I could not let it go. And I could not let you go either. It was not supposed to end this way. It was not supposed to end at all. You were gone and I was here. I had not thought of life without you since you came back into mine. I had never felt more lonely and abandoned. And I have lived a lifetime of being abandoned. But you said that you would never leave. You said that you would rather die than ever hurt me. And yet, I have never felt such hurt until you.

You left me with no choice but to accept that none of it had been real. Ever. It was real to me. Nothing had ever been more real to me. But never to you.  The butterflies in my stomach had become poisonous. They were now killing me cruely and painfully each day. I cried when I cut the vine and carried the dying stems to the pumpkin graveyard. I felt like I was burying you too. And me. A piece of me had died. A piece that had never even been alive before you. I loved you with all my heart. And I trusted you. I knew better. You were always too good to be true. It was a slow death, yet it was also an abrupt death at the same time. 

I left the pumpkins in the flower bed next to the front door. I could not bear to move them. They still reminded me of you. They withered a little more each day. They are still withering, dropping seeds to hide in the cracks. And every day that I see them I realize that you and I died the same death. All that remains is the rotten shell of what once was. Soon they will be gone too. And soon Halloween will come, and you and I are strangers again. I am not even the same person that I was this time last year, when I believed I had found my ever after. A more broken, different person. So much can change in one year. 

When I think of you now, I no longer smile, and I no longer adore you. Sometimes, I think I even hate you for bringing something to life inside of me, only to drown it to the death when you grew bored.

I would have loved you hard, with everything that I had. And forever. You knew that.