The Witch's Cupboard I Accidentally Inherited

The label warned:

Do not open.

But I did, anyway.

.

How uncanny

the cupboard was—

for that, I could not prepare.

.

A small cauldron,

still hot and steaming,

coated in dust of centuries.

.

Seven jars of preserved—

something.

(Do I even want to know?)

.

Eye of newt, one handful,

Silver Moon, a tablespoon,

A braid of hair, tied with twine.

.

Salt—enough to cover the house,

Finger bones, polished by use,

Pine needles, threaded with gold.

.

A letter, to be written tomorrow,

Ash, wrapped in linen,

Runes I can not recognize.

.

There's a tin of dried breath (label smudged),

Matches that only light when someone lies,

Cloves of garlic that hum at night.

.

The back corner is hard to reach,

but I can see a mirror, so small

it can't even show the truth.

.

And something carved on the back—

I'm not quite sure,

but it might spell:

Do not feed after midnight

.

And there's The Book,

that dreads the touch,

inching closer

to my hand.

This poem was written to The Page Gallery Journal's "House At Year's End" poetry challenge. Each day would give you a different prompt, which would leave you as a sort of Advent Calendar that leaves you with a chapbook.

The prompt for this one was: "What the cupboard holds–inventory poem, go look in an cupboard. Get weird with it."

There was a mistake in their challenge, and week 4 was posted as week 3, with the same prompts. When it was pointed out, they removed the entire challenge and never updated it. Still, since I saved the prompts, I wrote the chapbook for my own entertainment. (I thought it's a good writing exercise.)

For this prompt I wrote 3 poems, one is in the chapbook, this is the second and there's a third one that's going to be posted (or not, I'm still considering).