We Are All So Good at Smiling

by Amber McBride

Hoodoo is real, witches & Fae people too. Fairy Tales are real, magic is real, but, careful, Whimsy, sometimes your own mind will unroot you.

I shake my head thinking, We are all so good at smiling— like we invented it.

My point is that a leaf knows it’s important, at all moments of its life even when it is broken. People always forget that a rough day, a bad year— doesn’t equal a bad life.

I’ll think of Grandma wasting her final words on me saying, Magic child, your death is a long way away.

There is a boy who has lost & found himself so many times, he marks each rebirth with a flower making a garden on his body but he also forgets to water himself.

No one ever tells you that Sorrow doesn’t grab you by the throat. It opens the door, offers a warm fire, says—Have some candy. & I step inside (again).

Everything starts in the middle. It starts in the middle not the beginning or the end— stories start in the middle.

Mama Wata looks on proudly folding her arms covered in endless gold bracelets, her snakes bowing at me. She pushes a broken green sea anemone into my palm. Time to hunt, she hisses. Don’t be nice. You don’t show empathy to those who willfully hurt you.

Narrator (Interlude) Do you understand now (reader)? There is someone out there rooting for you. You are not alone, in any Forest. You there, hello, bonjour, hola— we are rooting, cheering for you to live & thrive.