Instructions for Disappearing

If you seek to vanish, child,

come to the woodlands where fairies rhyme.

Walk widdershins and don’t look back,

be careful for your wish they grant.

Find the ring where mushrooms grow,

step in thrice but nevermore.

Speak your wish in sugar-coat,

Whisper secrets wrapped in thyme.

One for sorrow, two for spite,

Three to twist the world just right.

Ask to trade, and trade you shall—

But not for what you meant at all.

Shard of bone, a drop of red —

that's your toll to seal their pact.

When the world wears nettle hue,

catch the wind that howls through you.

The forest knows — the circle keeps,

and what you sow, the twilight reaps.

If you’ve heard and still you seek,

then mark the moss and mind your speak.

With each line you now recite,

you take one step into their night.

So turn around and spit behind,

unless you seek to vanish, child.

~~~

🕯️ NOTE:

I wrote this cursed manual —a poem disguised as help that meant to ensnare the uncareful — as the extension of another story I wrote for "The Summer That Wasn't" challenge.

This children's rhyme could explain what happened in the forest in the story, "The summer that never ended" and why things turned out the way they did. You never know with fairy bargains and they consequences.