back-bones

when hansel comes to with the witch dead at his feet, he hangs gretel off him like a blood bag, drags her toes through the dirt, and he thinks she has to be broken in a ballet, she has to be broken in a pirouette. her toes continue to click in her shoes years later, a crunch that he is reminded of years later again when the moon hung like it does at midnight, as yellow as a sick child, facing the forest. hansel is rubbing his blue jeans like he does sometimes, the heels of his palms dragging the surface like nails on wood. it feels like fire and coal, a numbing that feels necessary until hansel says, “stop.” and when he sees her

there’s this boy i work with. he is five. he wears long sleeves and shorts with holes in them that are only kept together with small clothespins and thin threads. his hair is always cut close to his skin, though his bangs are left just long enough so it covers his eyes and i know no one can see them. but i always watch him. only sometimes i will allow myself to watch over someone else, even though i know this boy will only continue to follow me. he asks me to play, he asks me to speak, and sometimes, he even asks me to hold his hand. they are always cold and strong, with calluses and chipped nails that dig rough into my skin, and

there was once a boy who had all the write words to say with all those fancy allegories, metaphors and similes and antonyms of synonyms, like rails and snares and storms and organs and trains and drums and hurricanes and hearts, and she was only a girl with plain words, the kinds of things that are only found in piles of papers and pens, books she keeps where she sleeps, that will only break when he leaves in the morning, but she shares everything, like a boat shares a bard, like a cigarette shares a lung, like a mouth shares other mouths, like an artist shares her heart. but there is a running in her heart: not that type of b