In my own haunted wood

In my own haunted wood, I was the witch.

There was a path just off the main walkway. It weaved between two cedar trunks that were attached to one another by a common above-ground root. As I crossed the root and moved in between the trunks, I would mumble my name. If the faeries heard it, maybe they'd take me away to a paradise where summer always reigned, where this gnawing anxiety in my throat would finally go away.

I used to stay up late as a kid because I was scared of both actual and made-up creatures. In my early twenties, I endured two painful months believing that the pain in my back and chest and the tightening in my neck were signs of my heart failing. Even worse, I would gravitate toward 

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