Surrounded in woods the leaves
don’t trust you enough to fall. They’ll tell
you escape is dangerous. The entire
forest covered in wisteria, & phlox are
carving out your throat like red meat, like
full moon hysteria in the house where
they found you under an old mattress after
you had gone missing for weeks—your body
now missing its femur. Outside
vandals destroy what they name worthless:
the horseman, the oxen —& Fatima, thirty feet off
the ground with spikes hammering
into space reveals herself only to children. She wails
for those in hidden cabins, lean-to’s
in dark forests. Fairytales all begin like this: A girl is lost
in the woods and the woods are alive and branches
reach for her cape, crimson, fluid, and so she runs
to a witch’s house, a woman’s house & she is consumed
wholemeal or in pieces. She is frozen marble, pocked
concrete. Why are the choices maiden, matron & crone?
Why are our eyes held in cupped hands, all-seeing and blind,
wide open? Everywhere I turn flora holds its breath, waits
for a hard exhale.