sigrid nunez writes
“some things it would be death to forgive”
hansel and gretel’s witch
— evil, as expected —
but how to blame her,
when famine has swept the land,
divided heart and head,
body and soul,
families.
has not their own father
left them to die?
(the authors, men of course,
will blame the step-mother.)
one of many differences
between witch and hero:
the hero forgives
forgetting,
but witches want too much.
(perhaps this
is what makes them witches)
would a witch leave her child
for any man?
witches lock little girls in towers,
just to keep them.
they will not part
with a single bean.
riding home with my father,
ten years old, tactless,
delicately soled. I have
upset him—not difficult
to do. (seratonin is not
a playground word.)
“they run over dogs
all the time in burma,”
he tells me, and I know
he has said it only
to hurt me.
if my father left me
in the woods
I would not come back.
many years would pass.
until he found me
on his third honeymoon,
innkeep, at a candied house,
(rebranded, of course —
no hint of uncanny cannibals,
in The Lemondrop Inn.)
perhaps he apologizes perhaps he
smiles the smile he saves for strangers,
asks my name.
(teeth, the most misleading
of bones,
elusive, illusive,
not white stones but breadcrumbs,
not swan but snow-white bird.)
supercilious, collected,
I give him his roomkey
and change.