Addy Robinson McCulloch is a freelance writer and editor whose clients include Pearson Education and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her work has appeared in publications such as Redheaded Stepchild, 234, The Iodine Review, What Matters (an anthology of poetry from Jacar Press), and Get Out of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health. A graduate of Duke University, Addy lives in southeastern North Carolina.

Hansel in Darkness
(after Louise Glück)
By Addy Robinson McCulloch

How can I forget that foul stable,
the bones I swept into its corner with my shoe?

As I slept, the spirits of those bones taunted me.
Awake, I cowered with them, feasted
while you ate crab shells,
bided your time behind tears.

You swept fear
into the corners of your heart
until the moment arrived and you
tricked the witch into the fire.

Long nights without you, trying to outrun
the scent of dirt and smoke,
the sound of bone breaking beneath my feet.

I hear the witch’s cry in the moonlight.
You killed for me.