Today I Bake
To-day I bake, to-morrow brew,
the next I’ll have the young queen’s child.
Ha, glad am I that no one knew
that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.
The Brother’s Grimm
It’s late
I’m awake
you are upstairs,
asleep.
Time once, we loved
each other, thought we
found some
new way to make sense of the parts,
this riddle, that was us.
Us, who once loved
each other more than ourselves
only to rattle ourselves
out of the world around us
out of the world that was us.
I guess we are about to be split in two.
Guess!
Who am I now?
An ex-significant something or other
or worse
myself alone,
shouting at the night,
where my
own chains drove us
into separate towers filled with straw
where love dies
trying to make more,
leaving us
spinning twine into rope
as we grasp for names
and tear ourselves in two.
Available here
poet james escher 