Six Fairy Tale Poems
The Old Woman and the Snake
She found him on the porch one morning,
a black rope shining in the frost,
and thought, God has sent me a ribbon of night.
She lifted him with her broom,
set him by the stove to thaw.
His eyes watched her, slow as secrets.
“I once had a husband,” she said,
pouring water into the kettle.
“He was a quiet man too.”
The snake stirred in its new warmth,
tongue tasting the air as if
testing her words for truth.
The kettle whistled.
She fed him a drop of milk,
and for the first time in years, she smiled.
When the neighbors came to call,
they found the house empty—
only the broom, still warm,
and a trail in the ash
that led out the open door.
Some nights, they say,
you can hear her laugh in the fields—
soft, hissing,
like dead leaves remembering the wind.
The Sisters
In a time before kings,
two sisters were found
in a cradle of thorns,
howling like wolves.
The midwife fled—
their eyes were embers,
their breath, frost.
So the forest claimed them.
The first learned to drink
from silver skulls of rain.
The second stole fire
from a sleeping god.
They grew under ruins
where stones whispered oaths.
Crows brought them feathers;
snakes taught them prayer.
On the thirteenth moon
they split the sky—
one took the dark,
one took its reflection.
Nations burned
for the warmth of their names.
Men built churches
to cages of light.
But still they wander,
sisters without graves,
sowing storms
in the blood of the wind.
If you hear a voice
calling from water—
don’t answer.
It’s only them,
measuring your fear.
A Bottle of Wine
He found it on his doorstep,
wrapped in paper soft as dusk,
a red wax seal still warm.
The label showed two silver moons
and a small black bird in flight.
He could almost hear its wings.
He poured one glass, then another.
The air shimmered, sweet and sharp.
Voices began to hum his name.
He thought of her, long vanished,
how she laughed under falling stars,
how his heart turned like a wheel.
The wine burned down, a charm,
and time began to loosen.
His hands grew bright, transparent.
He saw forests inside the bottle,
cities made of trembling glass,
a thousand doors swinging open.
By morning, the bottle was empty,
the wax seal melted to smoke.
Only the bird remained, watching.
It waited beside his shadow,
a small black whisper of flight,
calling him softly home.
The Man Who Married a Shadow
In the kingdom of frost, a man found a bride
who stepped from a wall at sunset.
Her face was black silk, her hair nothing but hush,
and yet he thought she looked kindly upon him.
He took her hand—it made no sound.
He kissed her—his lips met air cold as mercy.
Still, he led her home,
and the door closed behind them like a mouth.
Every morning he laid a place for her:
a cup filled with darkness, a slice of night’s rind.
In the garden she tended the space between roots,
and when she laughed the birds froze mid-wing.
The neighbors whispered spells, made circles of salt,
but he was happy, or close enough.
He slept beside her shadow of breath
and dreamed of rain on mirrors.
When winter lifted its teeth,
she began to fade, the sun devouring her veil.
He chased her across the fields of thaw,
calling out promises that turned to crows.
Now no one remembers his name,
only the story of the man
who loved what he could never hold—
and how the dark took pity, and kept them both.
The Woman Who Gambled With Death
She met him in a clearing stitched with fog,
trees leaning close as if to listen.
He wore no cloak, no crown of skulls,
just a small smile that tasted of frost.
She bet her shadow against his silence.
He shrugged, threw bones carved from the moon.
Each roll echoed down her spine,
where sparrows built nests from her forgotten fears.
Once, she told him, I danced under nine suns.
Once, I swallowed a river and sang it clean.
He nodded, dealing her another hour
from the deck of the nearly alive.
When dawn came, they had traded breaths and tales.
Her shadow slept at his feet;
his silence clung to her like dew.
Neither won—
but she rose, half ghost, half laughter,
to walk home through the bright ruin of herself.
The Witch in the Pine Grove
She led her lover into the pine grove,
where the air smelled of sleeping girls.
She had kissed too many princes in her time.
The pines murmured hush, hush like nurses.
She laid him down on a bed of needles,
pricked his finger with her own sharp heart.
“There,” she said, “now you belong to the dream.”
Blood bloomed like a small red clock.
Once, she’d been the princess in the tower—
all lace and waiting, the moon her only visitor.
But patience curdles. One day she woke
and found the spindle gleaming with promise.
So she touched it, as we all do,
and fell, not asleep, but into herself.
Centuries passed like slow honey.
Thorns grew fat on her absence.
Men climbed and bled, always missing
the point of her story: that waking is overrated.
Now she takes her lovers to the grove,
shows them how to die a little, gracefully.
The moon blushes behind its veil.
She hums to him the lullaby that ends the world.
When morning comes, she’s gone—
only a smear of gold on the bark, the echo
of teeth in the wind.
Somewhere far off, a prince stirs, wondering
which life was the spell, which body started the fire.
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