Burn the Witch! (A Cautionary Tale)
Mother & Daughter lived together in the garden cottage, surrounded by a simple green life of tending, mending, hearty soups, & stories passed down a lovely lineage, a blood bond of womb, enriched with life given & shared.
Daughter grew especially lovely, caring for Mother as she withered, whittled by nature. Mother grew old, a crunchy cough soothed by the soups, but there is no cure for time, so Daughter made Mother comfortable, braiding her silken silver hair, her world & person in one sunny, satisfied, dignified deathbed.
Villagers came into cottage’s garden, a patchwork of people wielding various ill-will toward Mother & Daughter.
Mother’s breath rattled in her final moments of sleep as Daughter rose to meet the mob.
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Who are they, this Mother & Daughter, to live in such peace outside of the village?
They do not come to our shops for anything; it’s as if they don’t need us.
Why is there no man of the house?
Daughter is too lovely to be unmarried.
I heard that the Devil is her father.
They live out there all alone. Who protects them?
(from who?)
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“You are the Devil’s daughter,” Villagers proclaimed, locking Daughter in the barn & lighting it ablaze, burning Daughter to death as just as Mother was about to take her last breath.
Mother heard Daughter’s tortured final scream tearing through the flames & was jerked firmly away from Death’s final hand as her sweetest child’s life was ripped away suddenly, sizzled out of her like the juices from a steaming steak.
Mother rolled out of her deathbed, her long white braids unfurled into a mane of madness & scorching air, her nightgown a billowing death shroud as the cottage filling with the searing smoke of: her burning barn, Daughter, a rage of mind & the destroyed matter of her child scattered. Mother’s primal connection to Daughter deepened with the flaming hot wind, growing & blowing.
Mother stepped out of the cottage & into the blazing midnight, the ashes of Daughter filling the air with floating, flickering fire, a hellish shimmering that looked like magic.
Mother breathed in deep, the flaming particulates singing her nostrils, flaming her sinuses, encrusting her throat, charring her calcified lungs into a magma rage pumping her old sick chest full of hot air, both the billows & balloon.
Mother’s wrinkled skin firmed as the hot ash filled anything sagging – hair blackening – lips burning – beautiful breasts heaving as her death shroud sizzled off.
Villagers gasped at the dramatic unfurling of female, charred oxygen igniting their insides as they ran around aflame until the barn roof caved in, a flaming splinter shower sprayed through their skin.
Mother was reborn in the fire, an eternal woman of the wilderness now wild with the power of burning down, indestructible in her connection to herself, the source, the shadow, stars, seed, dirt & salt. Eternal in her anger of the severing of senses & senselessness, separation of self from wholeness, community commandeered by commodity.
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So don’t burn women. That’s how witches are made.
Halloween 2026
