Dear Herr Professor Grimm,
Please forgive this letter.
Our friend Red said when you and your brother visited,
he wrote her wolf-story respectfully, yet she remembers,
more than his careful writing, your soft voice.
So, I have a story too – one I wish I did not remember.
My little sister G – now her eyes are closed curtains,
and when Father reaches or speaks, she shuts the shutters tight.
The eyes in our house:
Mother’s eyes slide down when Father looks at her
(he does not want her to know),
dart left when G comes near
(she does not want to know).
Father’s eyes hunger when looking at G
and narrow when looking at me
(he knows).
G looks at me beseechingly
(she knows).
I cannot look at any of them so I look to you:
Maybe, perhaps, are your eyes kind?
Something is wrong in our house. I do not know what,
only that as night falls G’s eyes turn black
and bursting with fear, each night more and more.
I know I must take her away, right now,
to the safety of the dark forest.
We will walk, G and me, past Red’s house, (she will run
and give us rye bread), past the ravine, the rapids and the jagged rock
at the top of the rise,and then once we turn east we can rest
for bread and the sun rising over the ridge – and then walk again.
Herr Professor, perhaps you (and your wife?) would come
to the rock and from there follow the stones
I will scatter on the path: white stones, star-stones,
bright like the once-shine in G’s eyes.
Come find us.
Please.
Your friend,
Hansel
Previously Published in Mad March Hare.
Kim Peter Kovac works nationally and internationally in theater for young audiences with an emphasis on new play development and networking. He tells stories on stages as producer of new plays, and tells stories in writing with lineated poems, prose poems, creative non-fiction, flash fiction, haiku, microfiction, and three-line poems, with work appearing in print and on-line. He is fond of avant-garde jazz, murder mysteries, contemporary poetry, and travel, and lives in Alexandria, VA, with his bride, two Maine Coon cats, and a Tibetan Terrier named Finn. www.kimpeterkovac.tumblr.com
