Crumbs

by Kathleen Hellen

A dark wood I entered with little but the crumbs of her affection, though she pretended (a mother has to), the famine of her love the instruction for those who never loved me ever after, she the source of it, of all I would become, the mother of it all who turned her back and sent me off, the hungry maw that swallowed her that swallowed me, pushed me deeper into tangled trees rooted in despair, abandoned me in fear, the very ground of my being, I was lost, far away from those who might have loved me (if I let them), not the hags, the doppelgangers, her image in reflections, their sugars glistening but dangerous in light, their confections, sweet for the time I sucked at sweetness like a teat, but in the end, empty, the hunger only satisfied when I devoured all the houses that I lived in, myself inside, though I pretended I was satisfied, once upon a time.