After the oven,
the peppery stench & green smoke
searing their lungs, they flee

but in the small clearing
she grabs her brother’s arm—
Wait, the house!

so they drench the witch’s corpse,
bloating walls where water
splashed bread & they stay,

rationing doorframes & trim
until Gretel watching birds
peck among tree roots says

We must learn to hunt
& Hansel sets down his pail
—We should find Papa
before the snow.

Having seen cocoons
big as women deep in branches
Gretel cannot unsee them

or footprints smaller than hers
or the chimney glimpsed & skirted,
a whiff of shortbread—

so she breaks the promise
she’d whispered each night
into Hansel's cage—

so now she says They don’t want us
but he shakes his head
& in the morning has left, taking his pack

& a modest piece of the floor & Gretel
never finds him: not a sign or a shoe
though each fall she searches,

lengthening her pebble trail
to the leaning sugar house
she patches with wood & mud.