little red riding hood learns to fly

there were people who loomed
large and dark in our childhoods
they set traps and threw garbage
in our path to trip us up and slow
us down but we learned how to
disassemble and reconfigure
long before we could read words
we could read a room we became
capable of creating new worlds
from dryer lint and loving families
from cast off buttons we wrote
new fairytales set all the bears free
fed sweets to the ogres traversed
scary forests unafraid because
all our pockets were stuffed full
of magic we had made ourselves

Cinse Bonino
2025