As a child I read a book about a witch who turned children into flowers 
                  
and kept them in pots. She went out witching each night and left her daughter 
                  
at home with the weeping plants. Tormented, the girl tested her mother’s powders.
                  
Orange Flakes/Gold Dust/Purple Chalk that smoked and lit, but she failed 
                  
to free the children with roots for feet. Naturally, reading, I saw myself 
                  
as the witch’s child and not an adolescent in a pot. But now those girls 
                  
with fingers for soil and aphids crawling over their necks! 
                  
At the end of the book (forgive me) they came back, un-hexed at last 
                  
by the Red Powder. They stood in shattered earthenware, twigs in their teeth, 
                  
never having known they were plants! And I can’t shake my suspicion, especially 
                  
when I’m most content. I reach around with my feet, search the air with my fingers, 
                  
feeling for a smooth wall or rough edge, whatever it is, invisibly containing me. 
 
Karen Finneyfrock is our Poet in Residence for January.

Previously: The Change, and Little Red.