Once again, knowing I mustn’t
overstay, jumpy as a burglar
with an ear out for every
upstairs thump, I’ve come.

Porridge bowls, cracks browned
first with use, and now longer
disuse; the chairs, broken-legged,
precarious; the quilts on the beds,
threadbare.

Three wishes in the kettle bottom
like dried peas; rust-bitten axe
playing dead by the door; wolf’s grin
blackening on the hearth.

I touch the oven and shudder.

A trail of petrified breadcrumbs wanders
white as blindness through a field
where the woods once were.

All these years and nothing has
touched them: no bird, no beast,
no breeze. To think how often I’ve
followed them here in memory,
found myself eating them in dreams.