Fleeing cadence, time fleeting through birches’ leaves. Your tummy slowly shrinking. You run from sour milk and bread, crumbles in your hands. Muddy trainers prove the existence of iron in your system, it could be blood, or obsession. You keep running. Towards an opening, where summer rain veils your gaze, wraps the woods in fallible mystery.

Ducklings fight over biscuit morsels, carelessly thrown. A red-capped child marvels as if the clumsy birds were magical creatures of the spirit world. You look at your watch, quicken your pace. Round the bend, up the hill, hitting gravel.

Your feet crack something small, a mushy slurp. Disgusted, you scratch off the snail’s guts with a stick. Moving on. The river comes into view, a heron pierces the water, drags out a fish, lands on grass. Wings folding. You’re caught in the afterimage of the bird boasting its span. A heron in flight is a lucky sign. Perhaps the bleeding will stop.

The tales of princes and wolves you were told were all spells: you’d eat and pray and work. No longer can you believe in smiles with teeth.

He made you a cake but you couldn’t taste it, your daily steps carried you away. How content trees must be, rooting in slow motion, moving only in time lapse. His watch always shows the time correctly, tracks every stride.

Yellow bile of evening: one last incline and you reach the castle sleeping between oaks. Crows circle the towers. From here it’s only downhill. Slippery slopes bring you closer to home, muddy or clean, it all depends on you finding your footing. Leave the old bricks behind, enter the gates of the swaying elms.

All the sacrifices that you made: the hunger for life, collecting clots of blood in your cup, roses clipped of thorns— you throw them on your Wiccan altar. Your fists are little rocks, raining on his chest. You don’t make a sound, the downpour stops. He takes off his watch, rests it on black marble, among your offerings to spirit. And slowly, time melts with pain, pools into tides. You wait. You just stay there, like the trees.