Copper Nickel

Hansel in the Witch House

By

Inside my cage
I was almost too human
to contain myself

but she never knew.
Yes I was fat in there,
swollen with

fear, ripe with
everything I had taken in
by then, but

each time I stuck the
deceiving bone
through the bars

she cried out that
I was so lean and stubborn
I must not be human.

She died believing
I had managed to refuse
everything she was trying

to make of me.

Featured in
Poetry  |  First posted on 10.31.2019
About Susannah Sheffer: Susannah Sheffer’s chapbook This Kind of Knowing was published by Cooper Dillon Books in 2013, and her poems appear in Lake Effect, The Massachusetts Review,Tar River Poetry, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She works with people who have experienced trauma, and her book Fighting for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneys was published by Vanderbilt UP in 2013.