Beautiful Baba Yaga,
I wanted to be elegant for you; wise, clever, kind. Flesh and blood is a funny thing: it tugs at your heart strings like nothing else, swells you up, shoves mud down your throat, bite by bite.
I had a yearning for your life- an unrealistic, foolish yearning -because what a full life it seemed to me, sheltered and pale in the dark of my room. You had survived bombs, Nazis, a city burn-fall-fluttering with ash. What were my pitiful musings, my terribly ignorant ways, in comparison?
I feel at times I am your favorite grandchild, when the well-lit kitchen is still and quiet save for the two
Green Eyes,
I'm idealistic, you know. My dreams scurry away from me before I have a chance to catch them. I used to dream of you. Not sleep dream, but open-eyed and seeing you when you weren't there. You are beautiful but I loved your tangled insides more than the rest of you; more than your eyes and half mast lips and the yellow hair you kept in a pretty pony tail of shine.
I wanted your friendship. Not the hollow kind that is smiles and offers polite chit chat and laughs at light things. I wanted to separate your rib cage, pry apart each bone in the interest of finding your
let them ping-pong bounce, these thoughts:
they are gummy bears; clear, colored, pretty in palm and mouth.
they'll melt in the sun, goo under scrutiny;
little puddle rainbows slipping quietly down the drain
lost in the shit of sewers.
better to keep them in the jar, in the dark;
better to stifle little gummy cries before they can escape little gummy mouths.
shush the gummy lips; save them from letting gummy thoughts
ping-pong bounce little gummy bears
to their brilliantly colorful
gummy-puddle deaths.