She hangs the witch’s ladder up high to fix
the leaky spirits in the ceiling attempting to haunt
the sofa. The maudlin way the chains keep creaking
& the light of the moon when it comes too soon
makes the room more shadowy than she wants it to be.
A living room, she thinks. Not a haunting room.
We have to take company somewhere. So she hangs
the brambled ladder with sage for safety & insight.
From the right angle, dawn casts its light
and the ladder looks like teeth about to devour
the sun or small hands that try to weave the future
from found objects & welcome lost people into their homes.

Better than a welcome mat, the witch’s house is a sanctuary;
an interior design of the souls.

[Evelyn Deshane has appeared in Plenitude Magazine, The Rusty Toque, and is forthcoming in Tesseracts 19: Superhero Universe. Her chapbook, Mythology, was released in 2015 with The Steel Chisel. Evelyn (pron. Eve-a-lyn) received an MA from Trent University and currently studying for PhD at Waterloo University. Visit evedeshane.wordpress.com for more details.]