Baba Yaga The Wise

There are ways to disappear
without ever leaving a room.

Not suddenly—
that would be too easy to name.

But softly.

The way a spider crosses the night,
leaving behind something
so fine
it catches only when the light
falls a certain way.

At first,
there is almost nothing.

A glance held half a second too long.
Warmth disappearing from a room.
A question that is not a question.
A kindness with a little hook inside it.

One thread.

Then another.

Until she learns
the mathematics of peace—

how much truth can be spoken,
how much laughter is too loud,
how much wanting is too much wanting,
how far she may wander
before love becomes cold.

And because she loves,
she learns.

She folds her hungers small.

Tucks them into drawers
beneath old photographs
and winter clothes.

She leaves pieces of herself
in ordinary places—

a red dress she almost bought,
a friend she stopped calling,
a road she wanted to travel,
the beautiful unreasonable dream
she learned not to mention.

Another thread.

Another.

Nothing dramatic happens.

That is important.

Dinner is made.
The bed is shared.
Birthdays come and go.

There are photographs
where everyone is smiling.

From the outside
the house glows warmly at dusk.

Inside,
she becomes fluent in weather.

She can feel the smallest change
in the air.

She knows when to soften,
when to explain,
when to laugh something away,
when to swallow the bright little animal
of no
before it reaches her mouth.

Eventually
no one needs to tell her.

She begins tending the threads herself.

She calls it compromise.

She calls it keeping the peace.

Sometimes
she even calls it love.

Years later,
when she tries to explain
why choosing something only for herself
feels strangely like committing a crime,

why freedom makes her heart race,

why she still searches another face
before trusting her own,

the answer comes—

I never hit you.

And for a moment
the old spell almost works.

Because there are no photographs
of invisible things.

No purple blooming beneath the skin.

No broken bones
to hold toward the light.

Only a woman
who has forgotten
how much room
her own body is allowed to take.

Only a life bound
by a thousand invisible threads,

each one too delicate
to call a chain.

Until one day
something in her remembers.

Not loudly.

A small tug
from somewhere ancient.

A root beneath frozen earth.

A bird stirring
inside the dark architecture
of its own wings.

She touches one thread.

Then another.

And discovers
how easily some of them break.

Others hurt.

Some are wound so deeply
she cannot tell at first
where they end
and she begins.

So she goes slowly.

One truth.

One refusal.

One afternoon
belonging entirely to herself.

One dress
chosen simply because
she loves the way it moves.

One road taken
without explaining where it leads.

Thread
by thread
by thread,

until she discovers
beneath all that careful binding

the astonishing shape
of her own life.

Her hunger.

Her laughter.

Her beautiful unreasonable dreams.

Her voice.

And the wings
she had mistaken
for something
she was supposed
to fold.