Prequel to a Fairy Tale

Prequel to a Fairy Tale

I am Amelia.
My name borrowed
so aptly from the Latin
aemulus. Look it up.

The pigs have died and father, too.
Few beets and potatoes remain.
Mother's iron bones
have become palpable

through the tissue
of her skin. October cold
freezes the stars in place.
They have nothing to say.

But I know where the witch lives
in this Bavarian forest.
No need for white pebbles
to leave in my wake—

I am not coming home.
You see I have an appointment
with a moon setting
sweetly in the woods

despite a hidden pestilence
at her gates.
Skeletons of red beech
reach up, dark, cold and bare

in the trifling remnants of moonlight.
Translucent windows
of glazed sugar burn
in the light before dawn.
Candied eaves & gingerbread walls
invite teeth

but instead of sating my appetite
I knock thrice.
She rustles in her blankets
shuffles to the door

and opens it to find a girl.
I tell her I am hungry.
That I have come to learn her ways.
I say the latter with a judicious hint
so very lost on the hag.
Well, come in, my darling.

A massy pile of hazelnuts
sits on a plate, near green plums
in a bowl and a splendid sponge cake.
She turns a ring on a witchy finger

too many times watching me eat.
The compact cottage is warm
furnished only with a plain table
cut from spruce, a mattress

filled with corn husks,
horsehair chairs,
and an armoire with tiny bun feet.
But I feel ennobled.

A brook gurgles outside.
The sun's bugle begins to blast.
Please excuse my bleeding feet, I say.

The next night sidles up
like a chainsaw
as we chatter
gathering berries that grow

in blue profusion near the cottage—
little mercies.
Our words become part of the darkling sky.
Later, she asks me to climb into the oven
to prove its size is ample for our prey.

Show me how, I say.