THE WOMAN WHO COULD EAT WOOD Part 2, from THE WOMAN WHO COULD EAT WOOD
CONT FROM PART 1 ...
PART 2 THE WOMAN WHO COULD EAT WOOD
When she was a fully grown woman
she worried much less.
She and her worried parents
cried much less.
For dinner,
instead of ordering for herself Chinese,
she ordered a chair. At the table in the wood kitchen, not in Portuguese,
she told her proud parents she got a job (to help with the bills) at the local furniture dump the Taiwanese owned. There she’d eat all Santa’s
rejected toys for reasonable fees.
If Santa found out
that parents had dumped
their children’s wood toys about
the government would get more than thumped.
Santa would cancel Christmas forever!
And yes, FOREVER!
Anyway, Miss B kept quiet
about Santa finding out.
She made her parents sign a dump form that warned they too keep quiet like a dead rainbow trout.
If they, and she didn’t,
they’d be sent to jail and never GET OUT!
So she made the best
of her job (she was liked a lot) she quite liked.
And her parents were happy
she was making use and wasn’t disliked.
One afternoon
in the dump car park,
in her car,
B was kidnapped by a mean-looking elf named Mark
who drove them afar
to a weed-strewn car park.
Along the way
frightened B had cried, ‘How did Santa - oh how! -
find out I’ve been eating his unwanted toys?
How? How? How?’
‘You’re a real dummy, B!
Don’t you remember Santa is ALWAYS, NOW,
watching, watching us. And you’ve been too naughty,
so he sent me to stop you for good right now.
Then HE WILL, HE WILL INDEED
cancel X-mas,’ the elf yelled with a furious brow.
‘I’m s-s-sorry everyone,’
she let out, trembling with fear. The elf let her calm.
‘What can I do to make up for what I’ve done?
PLEASE don’t hurt me!
PLEASE don’t cancel X-mas fun for everyone!’
‘It’s too late for sorry, B!
You’re outré ability is, well, unforgivable, B!
You’ve turned Santa in a madman, B!’
‘Mark, I thought elves and Santa
were supposed to be nice
and forgiving
but both your hearts are as hard as thick ice.’
Trembling with fear again
for the evil look in Mark’s stygian eyes
showed her clearly
he’d soon turn her into pies.
So she quickly opened the door
and vamoosed across the asphalt of colossal size
into the unpropitious woods
that don’t compromise.
She ran north through scrub unpleasant and prickly,
ran under trees towering, leaning down
to scare her away quickly,
with their chomping mouths
wide and sickly.
TO BE CONTINUED ... in Part 3
Copyright ©
Matthew Herfurth
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