Write it on a dead leaf, a communion wafer, on cold earth with fingers numb.

Get me out of here.

Write it on the floor in dust, your finger shudders, the letters bleed over each other. In the Priest’s Latin, your father’s French, your mother’s German.

Get me. Out. Get me out of. Get me out of here.

There is a small light at the trapdoor above your head, but you could never reach it. A curling light, all made of shadow and fumes, like the trails of memory that follow the swing of the thurible. Repent, repeat. Arise, child and pray that your God will be merciful.

That he will not remember how you cursed, lay whimpering, praying to be free of this damp, dark place, while She sweeps overhead, fattening your brother.

She beats horseshoes in your heart.

Get me out of here.

Life will not leave this cellar, hemmed in by cinderblock and moss, so nor likely will you. Mold takes the opportunity to creep and climb. These green edges are the extent of the tomorrow you will see.

You are an obedient girl. In Mass, you sunk to your knees, your brother pulling on your braids, and now, now he understands what it is to know sin.

Through the floorboard of your heaven, you hear your brother’s wail.

Pray, girl, pray. That holy be thy pain.

   *** 

It is his idea, your brother’s, to enter the forest, to leave the cabin hewn of fallen trees, dried leaves in crisp tatters on the floor. You say no. You say stop. You say, we shouldn’t.

He says, let’s go.

It has been three days since your father left. Seven days since the cow went dry and toppled over, legs splayed like a beached beetle in the crispy grass beyond the back door.

Your father kicks the swollen belly with a tired boot. We do not eat cursed meat.

The wind whips the arms of the scarecrow trees and you give the corpse a shallow grave in water thin dirt, ice crystals shimmering like a broken edge of bone.

No milk. No cream. No butter.

Two days pass and you grind the final kernel of wheat. Two days more and your father leaves.

It is easy to think of when your mother was here. It is easy to think there were terracotta pots of parsley and rosemary, legs of supple deer hung by twine from the rafters, and jars of tart blueberry jam to eat in winter. It is easy to believe that she snatched the sun from the garden, tucked luck into her pocket and in her departure, tossed cemetery dust on your doorstep.

Your mother walked away with her legs open.

It is his idea to enter the forest, your brother’s. You are standing at the well, curved cobblestones pressed against your thighs, as you crack the ice, tug the bucket up.

We will find him.

This is not true. You know it. He knows it. But your brother has blue eyes, and in them, sometimes you see blueberry jam to eat in winter. When the bucket reaches the lip of the well, a toad, bulbous and gray, floats on a yellow disc of frozen water.

Get me out of here.

You meekly assent.

You will leave in the morning, before the frost lifts and the winter sun welcomes the caravan into the forest. You will leave in the morning, before their music shakes the trees, before their wagons of hedonism tremble through the forest. Your brother, girl, is a xenophobe. A wildebeest of Anglo superiority.

You leave early, so he need not confront his prejudice.

It is your brother’s idea to leave behind a trail. To find our way home. You think you should save the bread. Wasteful to drop pearls of rye like lost teeth over the pine-strewn path.  

You walk, maps of arteries, channels of indigo veins curling around trees in the forest, and you feel your heartbeat, beat, beat along with them. Fungi beneath the trees, miles and miles of channels, charts, tunnels beneath your feet rise in an organ wail and you remember Mass, your forehead pressed to dark stone.

Get me out of here.

Hours later, you see the cottage. In ketosis, it shimmers like a heat wave and glistens like a stick of sugar candy. You are wary but your brother pulls you forward– She welcomes you in; promising bacon and wine by a fire.

Your fear dissipates briefly, before cresting anew.

In that moment, you mistake the soft hew of Her arms as a mother’s benediction.

You are a stupid girl, wooed by mother-shaped trinkets that shine.

***

In the cellar, in the dark, you listen to your brother’s cries and you write your pleas in dust, in snow, in shit, in blood.

The light above you calls and you pause; briefly stop writing postcards to the frozen earth.

You, girl, could be fearsome in your desperation.

You, who have been passenger to bad ideas and broken promise-girl, this is your story now.

No faith to deliver you, no parent to save you, no brother to lead you home by bread crumb.

Girl, get yourself out of here.