It was during one Sunday dinner,
family gathered around the table

of my mother’s sunny kitchen,
that we heard an ambulance wail

up the drive to that ramshackle
square of a house next door.

At first we tried to mind
our own business, eat our meat

and gravy, bread and butter,
but eventually we looked

out the window, saw the white
mashed potato lump of a body

bag wheeled out on a stretcher
and the two big boys, both alive,

bulging from the front door frame
behind it, faces flushed and full

of grief, followed by a tuck-tailed
pair of dejected-looking dogs.

The witch was dead. I couldn’t eat.
My stomach was full of knots.