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.