I am thinking of Baba Yaga.
The baritone of my *Zaide’s voice
Oscillating between English and Yiddish,
Sitting upon his armchair as he told stories of the witch.
Zaide said she spent her days shut away in her hut in the woods
Waiting for a lost child or a runaway bride or a hungry merchant
Her face deformed and haggard, her skin a translucent gray
Her beauty worn away by years hunched over a cauldron.
I always wondered if she was ever a child
Her papery skin soft and downy in the way all newly made things are.
I wondered if she had always been this old folktale.
If she sat at her grandfather’s feet as he told stories of “wild women”,
Women who built their homes upon the bones of her dead,
Waiting in the dirt and the dark and the rot for their next meal.
I asked my Zaide these things
He never responded.
*Zaide- the Yiddish word for grandfather