On Darkest Night of Faerie Bright

by Sumiko Saulson

First published in the 2021 Horror Writers Association’s Poetry, also appears in the poetry collection The Rat King

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In an anxious child’s maw wiggles a single tooth

When he bites on a carrot, it comes hastily loose

Sell it off late at night for the price of two quarters

To the grim faeries famously known as tooth hoarders

–

Ignorant parents open windowpanes wide

To invite all the night’s hungry faeries inside

Little thieves glimmer bright stealing teeth in the night

Shining like fireflies in the low firelight

Faerie flight enters tiny, aloft glowing sprite

But they stretch and they grow to an enormous height

–

Talon-like fingerclaws drag on the ground

On the floorboards they scrape, such a nail-biting sound

Sunken eyes of deep red glowing like a hellhound

Rows of sharp shark-like fangs gracing sardonic grin

Three-inch denticles stretching from nostril to chin

These can easily slice through a soft human’s skin

–

How the bright faerie drools, all its hunger to sate

Inhaled lovely aromas arouse its palate

For the teeth of a child aren’t its only cuisine

Nor the only ones that it enjoys loosening

–

Upstairs yon tot’s grandmother restlessly sleeps

In her nightmares preparing, she quietly weeps

For a long finger prying most gently in mouth

As it loosens her teeth to the north, east and south

–

It inhales her last breath ‘til there’s nothing to save

For she won’t need to take all her teeth to the grave

When the morning arrives, see her grizzly demise

Cold coins lying on each of her dead, sunken eyes