Through creaking wood and grim grey walls,
That hides beings that tend to crawl
Sighs and sorrows of broken thoughts
Burning bodies and howling haunts
There she shines.

She sits and waits for a long and lost love
Lost in fate and time and sent from above.
Her sunflower hair rests on her pink dress.
Her beauty divine, I hate to confess.
An unnerving nuisance.

Smile like she does but we all know her story
The castle, the animals, and the glory
Blood letting, screaming, but only one survivor?
Hallucinations? Dreaming? But she lit the fire.
It wasn’t me.

I stand in the kitchen with a knife and board.
The board is my shield, and the knife is my sword.
In this sweet september, her life must end.
Her name is Ember, my sister, my friend.
No one knows.

“Jennabeth,” she calls from her blooming garden,
“Why do you stay in and let your heart harden?”
“I need a favor if you want me to come out.”
I said in a voice, as soft as a mouse.
“Bring me the gourd from Mr.Sedah’s cottage.”

“But sister,” she begged, “That’s too hard to carry.”
“But sister,” I mocked, “ You might just be scary.
Trust me, Ember, you won’t lose a limb.
Just tell him I sent you to get it from him.”
She questioned me.

“But why,if I may ask, such an odd request?”
“To make you some pie, my recipe, the best.”
“Okay,” she complied, “I’ll be back in a scurry.”
“Take your time,” I replied, “ You don’t have to hurry.”
She left peacefully.

Awhile, it had been since I had sent her on her task.
The minutes ticking fast, the clocks melancholy mask.
As the warlock of the village, Mr. Sedah knew a lot.
About the past, the future and about poisons blistering and hot.
He promised me a pumpkin.

A bright orange jack o lantern unpierced and unlit.
Glow and shimmer,it would if its smooth skin I slit.
It would smolder and scorch if cooked on high.
It reacts with water and with this she would die.
No one knows.

As I prepared for her return, I smelled a faint scent.
Not enough to overwhelm, but enough to dent.
A smell like a bonfire or simmering charcoal
Or maybe my sanity or a runaway soul
I couldn’t put my finger on it

I heard a loud groan as the door began to open
I slowly turned to see my pallid sibling, frozen
“Jennabeth, the things, the things I saw today.
I wish I could unsee them. I wish them all away.
I saw Death.”

“Dear little sister, of what do you speak?
You’ve been acting bizarre this entire week.”
I smiled a smile, so bright and so clean
She would have no idea what I mean.
She cried.

“His face was gaunt and his body was frail.
His mouth was sewn shut with a rusty nail.
He told me stories about impending death.
He told me that he would take my last breath.
Is that true?”

“Fret not my dear Ember, your light will burn steady.
Sit, and I will wake you when the pie is ready.”
She sat in a wooden chair, almost as small as her.
She had no idea of what was to occur.
No one knows.

I picked up the gourd with the utmost caution
Then put on my apron, handmade with pure cotton.
The itch to kill covering countless skin cells
A feeling familiar much like those earlier smells.
I grasped the kitchen sword.

I was done with the sibling who loved me so
She killed our parents, so she had to go.
A crown I once wore, it belonged to me.
They’ll pay for leaving, they’ll definitely see.
I’m not crazy.

As I reached towards the cutting board, my arm gave a twitch.
A spazz, a jerk, it was somewhat like a glitch.
Suddenly I was taken out of my own body.
Floating and swirling and honestly groggy.
I looked at the girl below me.

The girl had short brown hair but was nothing special.
She looked stern and hard working but not remotely gentle.
The knife she was holding looked dangerously sharp
A pumpkin was swaying to the beat of her heart.
It was also glowing.

She was ready to pounce like a black widow spider
She lowered the knife and it grew even brighter.
She was making a decision that looked dangerously wrong.
I could almost hear the melody of Death’s song.
The girl was me.

I awoke in a rainstorm of ashes.
A memory clashed of flashes and matches.
I looked to my side to see a burning home.
It was hard to believe that the home was my own.
But what happened?

In the wreckage of the charcoaled wood was a cloth
It was ripped up and tattered as if eaten by a moth.
I wouldn’t have noticed the small piece of fabric.
But the color had become a hard to break habit.
It was pink.