cake

Pointy is the noise that stares at him with empty eyes and blackened heart

A black cap adorns her brow as she stirs the cauldron of chaos and madness

She pours the concoction into her pan and heats it over the fire place

With a grimace looking through him as though he were not there and she were alone

He glares through exhausted eyes at the woman standing before him

With the last bit of energy he has he musters the strength for one question

A single word with a thousand meanings a single word with nothing for answers

His lips part the faintest of hope in his voice lights the room and vanishes the witch

A word simple and so small hits the room so powerfully that for a second time stalls

The witch the shape shifter has taken new form in the image of his mother

A cake in the oven she says everything is better with cake my baby boy she says

A cake in the oven is the answer to the question of why the witch allowed his pain

He realizes as he drifts in and out of reality that the woman before him is no mom

He sees only an empty vessel long ago marooned on a beach without escape

He sees a creature that does things to him that he doesn’t like he sees the devil

The worst of all of it is that he doesn’t even know that what is happening is wrong

His body becomes numb as his mind escapes though the front door he takes flight

He’s moving vertically now up high above the clouds looking down on the world

His body is being moved into the back room by the hands of demons and witches

What happens here is buried deep in Pandora’s Box as he drifts further away from it

The clouds take shape and reveal a playground where other children are smiling free

The children all shine like diamonds and move without gravitational borders

They have wings and the sound of cheerful laughter sails on the back of the breeze

They invite him in and for a moment he forgets his old life back down on the ground