THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE DOESN’T BURN

I have been living inside the witch for three winters now.

She built me sweet at first:

walls of warm gingerbread, icing mortar thick as forgiveness,

roof shingles of dark chocolate that melted on my tongue when I cried.

She left the door open every morning,

a sugar-spun invitation:

Run, little morsel. Run.

I never ran.

I sat on gumdrop furniture and licked the walls until my lips bled molasses.

I told myself the pain was flavor.

I told myself captivity could be a kind of love if it tasted like childhood.

She grew impatient.

She stopped baking.

The walls hardened.

The peppermint windows fogged with my breath and never cleared.

She began to starve me on purpose:

one gumdrop a day,

one licorice lash across the back when I begged for more.

I learned to eat the house slowly.

A corner of doorframe here.

A shingle there.

I chewed through the night until my teeth screamed.

I told myself escape was just another kind of hunger.

Tonight the oven is lit.

She hums as she sharpens the spit.

She thinks I am still the soft thing she carried in a basket.

She does not know I have swallowed half the house.

I am mostly gingerbread now.

My ribs are candy canes.

My heart is a crystallized violet beating slow and sticky.

She opens the oven door.

Heat rolls out like an old promise.

“Come, liebchen,” she croons.

“Time to get nice and crisp.”

I walk toward her on molasses feet.

I let her lift me.

I let her lay me on the iron tray.

She never notices my mouth is already full of the walls I ate.

She never sees the crumbs under my nails are also matches.

As she slides me into the fire, I smile with sugar-cracked lips.

The gingerbread house doesn’t burn from the outside.

It burns from within.

I am the oven now.

When she leans in to check if I am done,

I open my peppermint eyes

and breathe.

The last thing she tastes is childhood.

The last thing she hears is the door locking behind her.

I sit up in the ashes,

walls rebuilt around me,

warm again.

The door is still open.

I wait for the next child who is hungry enough to believe sweetness can’t hurt you.

I have learned to bake.

I have learned to hum.

And I never run.