Every witch has a magical familiar,
but outsiders cannot understand them.
They are a witch’s poison and puppet.
 
My mistress loved to bake. “To lure
the dear children in,” she’d say.
Their bones littered her garden.
 
Two brave ones tiptoed inside once,
without her knowledge,
without my usual warning.
I wanted to see how far they’d go.
 
The boy was on a mission,
his sweet tooth crying out
for the gingerbread men,
who waved, sneering and daring
the boy to munch on their bodies.
 
The girl was more cautious,
hesitating at the open spread feast
my mistress had spellbound eternal.
No one is able to resist, not even the girl,
and one bite can corrode control.
 
Like flies to honey,
the pair fluttered to the food,
and I sighed in disappointment,
aware that my mistress was hurrying,
salivating from my call.
 
Mistress trapped them in the kitchen
and prepared the oven, but
the fire refused to grow hotter.
The girl volunteered, claiming
she knew a trick with extra firewood.
 
She knew a trick indeed.
I watched helpless, as she pushed
my mistress into the oven
and sealed her inside.
 
My mistress burned.
Her screams polluted the air,
her fingernails marked the oven door,
as her flesh blackened to ashes.
 
I never saw the boy and girl again,
and though it pained me
to lose my mistress, my host,
I can’t say things will change much.
 
Mistress called me Sugar,
invisible, chronic, unknown,
whispering children inside
my gingerbread walls
like a sickness.

I wasn’t a teenager
The optician said it wasn’t grease either 
Within months I heard voices that sounded similar 
Each day they got friendlier
I felt humiliated I couldn’t see their faces 
They looked like ghosts and light was scattered through my utah 
I felt saddened that in the night the stars were not clear and appeared to be more far 
My mum held me tight and told me I was her strong 25 year old 
Drs said it was the rarest eye disease they ever saw and my story was just about to unfold 
I began to go from poised to quite the clutz 
At least the elderly had jokes about the reflux 
Or pretty much my bad dancing on broadway street 
The sun was once my best friend but there was a time I dreaded the heat 
My eyes watered and the light scattered more into I threw myself into oblivion 
Then I met a brave Palestinian 
He told me not to give up that the eye disease I had was keratoconus and my cornea was wearing thin 
I cried as I once again stumbled and hit my shin
The Palestinian urged me to get a life changing surgery called collagen cross linking 
I heard crickets as I stared at his ghostly figures thinking I saw a short beard through my excessive blinking
My right eye was too far gone and  I was laughed at as I developed astigmatism and everyone laughed at me 
None the less I was numb for hours and then  screaming baby 
Mum took care of me 
Assuring I got salty drops into my eyes 4x a day 
I couldn’t see with my right eye so I kind of felt helpless at this point in my life and I just listened to soothing audio and lay and lay
My eye healed and she asked if I could still see ghosts or scattering
To my surprise the ghosts were gone and I saw the scattering was less on the lights so we got back to knattering
We had great conversations and eventually I took care of mum through her sickness until she passed away and finally met a great surgeon 
She was Indian 
She moved the entire muscle in my eye the scattered lights is still there and ghosts but not the astigmatism unfortunately nothing could relieve the scar 
There are things I want to do like drive, but I might not be able to because contacts feel like you’re wearing foreign objects and getting infections 
I wish your sight could be restored with injections 
Like they do flu jabs and other such nonsense 
None the less it’s a horrific disease but it never stopped me smiling but why be miserable I have my other eye it makes sense 

I speak to you now, soft twin of silence and song--
not in dread,
but in dialogue.
Let this be a reckoning, not a reckoning by force--
but one by tenderness.
 
You have been
the site of wonder,
the seat of shame.
 
When I was young, I covered you,
wishing invisibility.
I mistook self-consciousness for humility--
before I understood vulnerability
as the birthplace of worth.
 
You emerged slowly, like truth,
late-blooming.
And when you came into your own--
not grandly, but fully--
I stood taller beside you.
 
You were never loud,
but you were mine.
And later, loved.
Held in warm hands.
Praised in the hush of midnight.
My fleeting confidence rose with you,
and even in its impermanence,
there was joy.
 
You fed life once.
You poured out milk
like a quiet miracle.
You were more than symbol.
You were service,
love in biology.
 
Now, they scan you.
They mark you with numbers and doubt.
A possible betrayal--
but even in decay, you do not lose dignity.
 
If there is disease,
it is not who you are.
You are a vessel, not a verdict.
 
Society still names you
fetish, scandal, battlefront.
But I call you connection--
to my child, to my lovers, to myself.
To the years I wore you with hesitation,
and the ones I wore you with pride.
 
Sometimes I rest my broken glasses on you--
a moment of absurd tenderness--
and I wonder:
do you still want to speak?
 
If so, speak now:
Tell me how you feel
about being feared,
about being watched,
about carrying a lifetime of meaning
without ever being asked how you feel.
 
Tell me if grief lives there.
Tell me if courage does too.
 
Tell me if, like me,
you have been waiting
not just to be examined--
but understood.
 
My breast,
if you must be taken,
let it be with ceremony.
If you must be saved,
let it be with reverence.
 
And if you are fading,
let it be as moonlight fades--
with quiet beauty,
with memory intact.
 
Because you were never just flesh.
You were always a feeling.

About the author:
Meg is an Australian self-published new Author who has one book *Story: Reflective Poetry* (2017), and a number of poems published to journals, in which some include: *Tipton Poetry Journal* (IN); *The Sunflower Collective* (LA); *SKYLIGHT 47* (UK); *Lifelines at Dartmouth* (MA); *Nature Writing* (UK); *Eureka* (Australia); *ditch* (Canada), and others.

Meg was lucky to have positive press coverage in newspapers across the state of Queensland, and a positive written review by The Red Room Company (Australia) regarding this book which shows a reflective style of writing. Meg’s writing demonstrates elements of whimsy, transparency of feelings, abstractions, and may present as illustrative through her use of sensory and colourful words and imagery.

Meg is self-taught and formerly worked in mental health as a therapist and support person. Meg’s education and qualifications are in Counselling. Meg is now retired due to an illness and has taken to writing as an outlet.

Meg really admires and feels inspired by renowned poets local and international, such as Sam Wagan Watson, Dylan Thomas, Lord Byron, Les Murray, Clive James, Judith Wright, Dorothea Mackellar, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Yeats, Ocean Vuong, Kevin Young, Sharon Olds, Henri Cole, T.S. Eliot, Mary Oliver, Wordsworth, Jacob Polley — and many of the Bloodaxe Book poets.

Again She defeated me in the battle 
and as usual I came back as winner 
with a broken heart full of petals given by 
the golden moonlit night for whom I always kept 
a thorny conversation for her and she always 
smiled to remove the pride of sultry days 
and she does always.... 
and I always do the same and get defeated... 
 
And it is still night in a silent tent 
and I have to bow down to kiss the feet of the nectar 
 
I have to be alive to be winner 
after being defeated and defeated and defeated .   

​About the author:
Partha Sarkar, a resident of Ichapur, a small town of a province West Bengal Of India, is a graduate who writes poems inspired by the late Sankar Sarkar and his friends (especially Deb kumar Khan) to protest against the social injustice and crimes against nature. His poems have been in different magazines both in Bangla and in English. Once, he would believe in revolution but now he is confused because of the obscurity of human beings, though he keeps fire in soul despite.

How cathartic, this roving mind,
This absent functionality!
All schedules and packed deadlines
Cast off, adrift in sunbeams.
Oh—that indigestion, tender head,
The aching in my wrist?
Whisked away by Vagrant’s touch,
Cured by idleness.
I dérive, as the French might say,
And take the landscape’s hand,
It leads me in a quick foxtrot,
Laughing with the band,
With the blue jays’ bouncing tune--
This lack of destination
Is my destination,
This drifting out of gloom.
And when I perch back on my chair,
And set my hands to strive,
I find the Vagrant’s straying
Has re-aligned my mind.