Gretel's Manifesto

They tell you I was lost.

A child, all soft palms and frightened eyes, crumbs in her pocket, prayers on her tongue.

They tell you I was brave, clever enough to push her into the oven. That I saved my brother. That I went home.

That I lived happily.

No.

I didn’t go home.

I didn’t forget the scent of sugared flesh and iron.

I didn’t stitch myself back into the pattern they laid out for me.

I walked away from the fire with ash in my teeth,

and hunger in my chest.

She taught me more than they know, the witch.

She taught me that the world feasts on girls who wait.

That cages can be made of marzipan and whispers.

That kindness is a currency,

and I was bankrupt.

They say I killed her.

But let me tell you:

I was forged.

In heat and smoke and horror,

I became something new.

Not girl. Not victim. Not ghost.

I became flame.

I wrote my name in soot across the gingerbread walls,

carved spells into the bones of the house.

I took her books.

I took her teeth.

I took everything she thought I’d be too soft to carry.

And I ran.

Not from fear,

but from the story they’d try to write me back into.

I never needed breadcrumbs.

I leave a trail of fire.

Hansel wept.

Poor boy. He wanted safety. Closure. Mother.

I wanted more.

I want dark woods and darker truths.

I want teeth that match mine.

I want to build something out of sugar and ruin,

and feed it only to those who dare to follow me in.

Let them call me witch.

Let them call me wicked.

Let them warn their daughters.

Let them.

I will never fit their fairytales again.

I am the thing the woods whispered for.

And I have only just begun.

I roam the places they paved over with silence,

I unearth the bones of every girl they buried in shame.

I teach them to rise with the moon in their mouths,

to speak in tongues sharper than blades.

I gather the ones with restless eyes,

with too-loud laughter, with fists full of thorn.

I call them sisters. I call them wild. I call them free.

We wear our scars like charms,

our hunger like crowns,

our rage like lullabies sung to a sleeping world.

There are ovens yet to burn.

There are stories yet to ruin.

There are names they never carved on the spines of books—

but we remember.

We speak them like spells, until the air shivers.

Do not look for me in the endings.

Do not expect a moral.

I am not here to teach you anything gentle.

I am here to tell you this:

The girl survived the fire.

And she kept the flame.

And now—

she is building a kingdom with it.