SubTerrain » poetry

A very small fairy tale

By Annette Lapointe

There was a little girl with an axe. She walked through the woods and the wolves avoided her, and when she got bored with walking, she built a fort out of skinny aspen trees and lived in it. She decorated the walls with the skeletons of animals and the skins of predators that got too close and the head of the woodsman who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Later, she was joined by the girl with a saw and the girl with a whip. The fort expanded a little and developed interesting corners. Small, sharp animals came to live with them.

The boy who stripped naked crawled through the low fort door and stood there, ignoring the smell and thinking vaguely about blood. When the girl with the axe and the girl with the whip backed him up to the wall, he said, “okay,” and closed his eyes.

This wasn’t that long ago, and it happened somewhere north of Saskatoon.

From Issue #51.

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