Hansel & Gretel

The vast emptiness
of the unrecorded forest
slowly fills their eyes.

Lost feet unpick
densely threaded paths
re-weaving the strands
into familiar bewilderment.

Somewhere at its core
is a cottage made of cake
and a wicked woman
made of salt.

She is older than
the trees and the lost ways.
She persists like
forgotten fungus.

We have all seen
this cottage and
tasted its cake.

It grows children
into adults and
feeds their fears.

This place is thick
with the lies of parents.
We all rot from
our childhood out.

And witches do exist.
And they do eat children.
But only after they’ve
grown up.

*This poem first appeared in the author’s own collection Human Engineering (Thynks Publishing Ltd, 2013).

David J. Costello lives in Wallasey, Merseyside, England. He is a member of Chester Poets. David has been widely published on-line and in print including Prole, The Penny Dreadful, Shooter, Magma and Envoi. David is a previous winner of the  Welsh International Poetry Competition. His debut pamphlet, “Human Engineering”, was published by Thynks Publishing in October 2013. A second pamphlet will appear in September 2016 from Red Squirrel Press.