Our bread crumbs didn’t last and did no good,
Except to fatten teeny birds of prey,
Waiting for us. So we just ate the bread,
And berries from whatever bush we passed,
Thinking that every mouthful was our last,
And there we were, Hecate’s Hideaway.
The sign said we should walk right in; the birds
Had fallen back and shut their eyes. A door
Marked Either Push or Pull in steaming words
Was decorated with a rampant bear.
We changed our minds, my little sister said.
There are more pleasant ways we could be dead
Than eating eaves and downspouts and veneer.
The windows showed a shape behind. We spoke
Never of Deadly Stepmother, who broke
Our daddy’s arms and will. We turned the knob,
And every bird of prey began to sob.
Get over it, I said. At least we’re here.
Exercise equipment and jars of pills,
Portraits of cats and pollywogs en croute,
These the nefarious accessories
They feared? These spooked the spotted peccaries
Who trampled children? Home without a doubt,
We hung our sweatshirts in the polished halls
And settled for adulthood and a style
Of limited means. We paid the local tax
And mended squeaky hinges. In the loft
Were comforters and all the clothes we’d left
Behind, outgrown now. From a metal box
We drew a deed written in blood and bile.
It’s all yours, and it always was, we read
On the appended Post-It. We fed the birds
And omnivores who visited in squads
And raised a ruckus when somebody tried
The wooden gate. No lawyers came to call.
Our footprints, first obscured, were gone by fall.
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