Thais Serenity Poet Prose Poetry

Once Upon A Time

Once there was a girl who visited her grandmother on a long weekend. She was alone with the old woman and told, "Good girls listen and get delicious rewards." Her grandmother placed a fresh batch of doughnuts on the table. The sugary aroma danced inside her nose. She wanted to be good. She reached for a doughnut—the glazed promise melted in her mouth. It stayed within her teeth along with three cavities.

Upon the first bite, the kitchen warmed, like an oven heating up to bake a meat pie. There are two types of grandmothers in stories like these. The first kind of grandmother was the loving grandmother who cared for their grandchild and taught them a bit of magic. The second kind of grandmother is the monstrous grandmother who abused her grandchild and ate them when their tender flesh fell off the bone.

A girl like her hoped that if she followed the rules laid out, her grandmother would turn out to be a loving kind. The threat of being turned into a meat pie terrified her. She liked her flesh attached to bone and beneath skin. She couldn't help but side-eye her grandmother when the old woman prepared chicken for dinner. "Strip the bird of its skin in one go. It's painless that way."

Time was something the girl didn't have when she woke up in a hot room. The temperature rose, and she baked under a brown blanket. She wheezed and tried to loosen the bondage to escape the heat. Her grandmother's muffled voice slipped through the gaps in the metal door. "Sleep tight, dear, don't let the bad dream disturb you." She felt the sweat steam off her skin. She wiggled and escaped the stiff blanket. She scrambled to the door and burned her hands from shoving against it. The door cracked open, heat fled the oven, and she didn't see her grandmother.

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