By Marsheila Rockwell
here is a witch here!"
The parson proclaims
As they burst through my front door
And drag me from my rocker
The cat leaping innocently from my lap
"There is a witch here!"
The goodwife testifies
Telling of a pox upon her nether regions
A malady, I'd wager, owing less to magic than lust
Then again, she did throw a shoe at the cat
Who lounges idly on the window sill, watching
"There is a witch here!"
The mob crows
As they eagerly put flame to kindling
And they are not wrong
But my death will do naught to lift her hex
For even now she walks among them on silent paws
Searching their flushed and hungry faces
For my replacement
"There is a witch here."
My gravestone reads
While my spirit keens a warning
For those with ears to hear
And the wisdom and wit to flee
There is a witch here
But I am not she
I was only her familiar
Marsheila Rockwell is a Rhysling-nominated poet and a poetry editor for Mindflights. Her first novel, Legacy of Wolves, was published in 2007, and she is currently at work on her second. Marsheila lives in Arizona in the shadow of an improbably green mountain with her Naval officer husband, two sons, the requisite dog and cat, and far too many books.
[contents]