gingerbread heart

i twisted secrets into bait.

i held you hostage

deep in the tangled wilds

just outside my gingerbread heart.

i visited only to cure and fatten you,

i think of emotions as spices,

salt in the wounds of the princess

kept outside my gingerbread heart.

i will core and eat you like an apple, for

i am the wizard, the villain, the wolf in winter

and there is no knight in shining armor,

only blinking lights to lure you from the porch into the forest.

Back in the early aughts (2000's), I had a bit of a fascination with fairy tales in general, and the spooky qualities of these stories in specific. I wondered if I could write a "romantic" fairy tale poem that had some of the aura of a Hans Christian Anderson myth. This is my attempt to accomplish that goal.

I am relatively happy with the poem, but I found the fairy tales somewhat limiting in their subject matter as it related to my poetry, so I only wrote a few, and of these, I only kept two. I would be interested in how a reader would respond to a fairy tale poem, as I recall gingerbread heart has only been shared a handful of times. Feel free to write your comments in the provided section. I look forward to reading them!

Joshua Wiebe