Like any unremarkable sister, Gretel forgets the moral.
When the spruces introduce
the wipeout-angel boy, all wax
and eagle wing, she would like nothing
more than to lick him
like she licked the candy cane
A-frame all those sleeps ago.
Suck the kelp from behind his left ear.
You smell like burnt soup, Gretel says
in lieu of licking. You smell like dying
gummy bears, Icarus replies.
Salt-boy and sugar-girl sink together into the trough
of underbrush. She tells him about her gingerbread troubles.
The brother. The cage. He tells her about how it felt to split open
the sky. The gull-caw. The contrails.
A de-ascension in watercolor
with no time to dry. Gretel wants to know if it hurt.
Oh yeah, Icarus says. It killed.
The apron has pockets, which means
there are still good things. She shows him
the stashed bloodroot and black cohosh,
picked special for tomorrow’s brother
stew. She meant to save room
for the goldenseal. How are we supposed to know
how much is too much? she asks Icarus,
who has don’t-ask-me eyes and globules of wax
on his cheeks that say, I am not to be trusted
with twinkly objects. But Icarus, too, is a child.
Car chase of a boy. Lockjaw of a girl.
How much & how close?
This is how it has always been.
So forget the chicken bone, he tells her. Forget the cage.
And she does. She forgets. Forehead to forehead
in the briar patch, they forget,
leaving Daedalus and the witch to the simple pleasures
of a dead child.
—Eliza Gilbert
Eliza Gilbert is an undergraduate at Vassar College. She was born and raised in New York City.
