I should explain. Andrew had gifted me a copy of Martyrs Mirror. Soon after, in an unrelated fit of “research”, I found myself reading up on the Grimm Brothers. Some time later, I came across a photo of me receiving a giant “bedtime story” book, I think maybe at the age of 3. It’s one of the few things I’ve kept from my childhood. The illustrations conveyed danger, and it captured my imagination. (Feature photo from that book.) All these images and impressions came together in my mind and I wrote a stream-of-consciousness thing:
i fell into a rabbit hole
detailing the darkest fairy tales of the grimm brothers
they remind me of what i see in martyrs mirror
intended to be inspirational but come on
they remind me of a book of nursery rhymes
gifted to me as a small child
i became lost in the illustrations
in tears over the absolute tragedy i saw in each story
the danger, the darkness i felt emanating from each page
the hungry look in the wolf’s eyes
lurking in the woods
i looked to our own woods
at the edge of untamed HBC land
i asked, are there wolves
the answer, well sure there might be
but don’t be afraid
okay wait if you’re afraid, then no, there are no wolves here
don’t cry
the crying stopped, the fascination stayed
peering back through time
since childhood i’ve felt a dark undertone in these stories
the latent energy surrounding these tales
interwoven
rooted
in the same dark time, centuries before
our dark time
/not a poem, just a weird post
