Felix was tough, Felix was strong, and I sawed into him, and he did not tell me to stop, because what else could he want but to become?

The prodigious, slick fiber, heavy with seeds, heady with stink, that I scooped from my son, filled a metal mixing-bowl first, then a blue coffee mug, a wine-glass, and the tureen my wife and I received for our wedding but never used. I thought it might be endless, that my son might never be emptied. Eventually he was. I took this part of his flesh and I scattered it on the lawn where his mother had bled and birthed him, which made some circle whole and bound tight, and seemed right to do.

Then it was time to reveal his face. With a paring knife I began the tear duct of his left eye, which I would make almond shaped, and though it could not be brown like mine nor green like my wife’s, it would be filled with light, and that was enough.

I cut his right eye too high, and slanted as though in anger, and his mouth smiled too much, because perhaps my hopes guided my hand. Perhaps I wanted him to smile, even, after all the loss and pain we had shared, needed him to smile, to be happy in his life, but that choice was not rightfully mine to make.

So again I took up the paring knife, carving away more meat to make his eyes even, neutral, perhaps inquisitive, as that was a fair influence for a father to have, to lend his son an inquisitive nature. I tried to open his mouth into speech, something intelligent, unforced, but now his eyes were too round, as though surprised, and is mouth gaped as though in hunger. This was not work I could be proud of, not a child I wanted to send into the world, a creature shocked by his own appetite.

I took the knife to my son over and over, but no matter how much I cut from him I could not find the shape I knew he deserved, and finally the moment came when I could cut no more away without risking the complete loss of any face at all. I said, I’m sorry. I said, I’m so, so sorry. Your mother would have done it right, would have known just how to make you what you were meant to be. I’m sorry I failed.

I put a candle in his empty head and lit it with a match but when I looked into his face all I saw were three, gaping holes and a candle in a pumpkin.