Needles and pins

Issue three: poem by Sara Cleto

Anatomical illustration, including masseter, from Dr Johannes Sobota’s Sobotta’s Atlas and Textbook of Human Anatomy, 1909.

The first lie, Little Red reflects, 
Supine on the examination table,
Was that the Path of Needles
Differed from the Path of Pins, 

When both roads prick her feet,
Tatter her cloak,
Coax her amygdala into the 
Hypervigilance of startled deer.

The truth, her therapist told her, was that the
Geography between her cottage and grandma’s is
Riddled with roots sharper than pins and
Wolves with teeth and claws,

Dappled with sunlight and insects that
Prick with imperceptible precision,
Invisible (until the swelling sets in) but
Real (she feels it in every red cell in her body) even 
Though the marks are in muscle, gristle, gray matter.

Little Red tries hard to believe her therapist.

The Path of Needles, the Path of Pins,
The Path of Talk Therapy and Medication and
The Path of Sharp Teeth in a Frozen Jaw, 
She has walked every route through this wood

To get to grandma’s house but also to
Get some goddamn help after
The wolves attacked her but

Finding helpers and asking them to help
Isn’t easy when most of the scars are on the 
Inside of her skin, branded where she can 
Always feel them but no one else can see.

Because that means she has to tell them,

And retell them, about the pins and needles 
And wolves when, quite honestly,
Little Red prefers not to think about this
Or about her body at all.

But she is getting out of this wood.

And so she grits her teeth 
As the first needle slides into her jaw,
And stitches  through her mandible 

Clench, release, exhale

As she tells around and under and through,

Her battered masseter growing stronger, she
Feels herself remembering how to use it,

To chew,
To speak,
To bite back.

Sara Cleto is an award-winning folklorist, teacher, and writer and a co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic. She completed her PhD in English and Folklore at the Ohio State University in 2018. Her work can be found in Uncanny, Enchanted Living, Star*Line, and many others, and her poem ‘How to grieve: a primer for witches’ placed second in the Rhysling short form category. You can find her online and learn with her at carterhaughschool.com. Her first book, Fairylore, co-written with Brittany Warman, will be out in 2025..