I forgot
I forgot that you don't steal from the witch's garden and
I stole from the witch's garden
There were dreams I'd had before but never remembered-
The one where my father chased me around the side of the house and I fell, waking as he reached for me
The one where I found a three-posted door and inside was my perfect life
The one where a beast lived in the backyard and no one knew its name but me.
And still further back.
Blood-smell, the chittering of rat laughter, the shape of not-yet things. I couldn't look at those.
I ducked under their tangles and dusted the earth from my knees
And further back still-
Right up against the edge of her house, under the window where she waits and watches, was what I craved. Was all I wanted.
That is what I took.
In the dream I ate my fill and when I awoke, I knew.
But the witch knows too.
She knows.
I hear her tapping a finger on my window when I wake in the middle of the night
She says The child is mine in a voice darker and heavier than grave dirt
Her nature is never to lie
Every child is hers, both the living and the dead
She bellows like the ocean must have at the very beginning of the world
She tells me the name of what I stole, over and over again,
until it begins to sound like my name too
