I followed that mother in stealth to the gnarled tree as she undressed for sleep, revealing two mothers—the loving and cruel one. Together the mothers rubbed four palms, setting ablaze a red cape that transformed into a cap, an apple, a rose bush, planted for me by mother, who promised never to leave.

I remember selling a milk cow who turned out to be mother.

I remember snoozing on a pea that mother snuck between my sheets.

I climbed above clumps of cloud, while mother remained on soil, cackling at my wampum cache.

Oh, the times mother cracked a looking glass into a thousand and one shards, the glints reflecting our oneness, mother seething from believing the glass bore my reflection only,all the while, the beauty she glimpsed was her own. Mother unable to recognize self. So many lifetimes devoted to re-darning the fabric from that disaster.

And I remember the multitudinous iterations of anecdotes in which I brought my last basket of goodies to mother, and, always, after she devoured the proffered sweets, she gobbled me up. When will I learn?

I remember sticking porcupine spines in her belly and still I was buried, so still, in her burnt brown earth beside brother, twin figurines born of mother. She held us by our heartstrings, pine needles or pins and needles clamping our pouty mouths.

Day-by-day, brother—my clay counterpart—and I collected quills sacrificed by goodwilled birds that pecked our breadcrumbs and, with them, penned the story of our escape from mother’s gaping hunger.

Though, truly, the most ingrained tales I tell have expunged the wiccan from my heart by weakening mother. The tale of pinning mother to a pine broomstick so she stays put—but crafty mother casts a wren spell on the witch’s fagot to sweep away a messy world, to keep a quiet mind, to free nations from dust, from dirt, and to wash the well that feeds our forest trees. She polished our mirrors. She purified our lands with her cleansing sands. She washed her hands.

And then that magickal broom flew mother into midnight’s bellybutton. Before leaving, she baked us wonder sandwiches, moon-yellow butter spooned liberally on a bed of breaded stars, to guide us as we grew.