It Is A Woman Who Tells The Story

Why is the moon where you are. Why are we surrounded by a storm.

Writing from before dawn to just after and forgetting to feed the horses so Chrisoula wakes earlier than intended and feeds the horses.

Why do we forget who we love. Why do we consent to be carried away, over and over, like a leaf on a river.

Why do we think the sea cares so much about getting.

It was not the white pebbles that saved the lost children but the willingness of the boy to think in spite of his fear and thus come up with a plan to sustain them in their time of abandonment.

Yet it was Gretel adopting the witch's methods (you're not hungry, you're supper) that ultimately saved them.

The boy plots and learns nothing but that some plots work and some plots don't.

Gretel kills and learns the value of living and death.

In my twenties I sought the witch mother and was given a relationship with bluets, pretty little flowers which I secretly named "Mother's Anger."

I don't remember my thirties and forties. They are washed out by good intentions and half-assed applications of Christian theology.

Why do you think it matters where the moon goes in the sky. Are you looking for a trail. Who are you reassuring. Who is reassured.

The step mother, the witch mother and Gretel are the same woman. It is a woman who tells the story, and a man who says later, at a different fire, "the story means this" or "the story means that."

The boy who wants to understand becomes the man who believes he understands. The man who believes he understands believes a witch can be defeated. He thinks you tell the story because the witch has been defeated.

In the jaws of a snake, the man looks for something to eat.