Over the crackling phone line, she asked, flat and ancient, “Are you a witch?” I had simply requested three unlaid eggs from a slaughtered hen. To me, it was soup from the old country; to her, eye-of-newt territory. Silence stretched. “To heal cancer,” I added. A long exhale. “So you are a witch.” Maybe she wasn’t wrong. Wishes that came true, curses that stuck, strangers sensing ghosts at my shoulder. My grandmother muttering over simmering broth, passing down moonlight and salt. Was it magic or inheritance? I really don’t know. But I’ll keep the broom by the door—just in case.
Lisa Brodsky is a writer whose work bridges personal narrative, cultural memory, and social justice. She is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at Hamline.