Nursery Rhyme Riffs (Part 2)

[WARNING] A dark retelling of three nursery rhymes through poetry and prose.

Rock-a-bye Baby

In the treetop, cradle sways,
As wind's whispers fill the leys.

Cradle rocks, fragile and light,
Bough breaks, a fateful plight.

Down they tumble, both entwined,
A tragic end, destiny unkind.

Silent lullaby, mournful refrain,
Life's fragile thread, severed again.

WINTER CAME INTO the house sideways, threading under doorframes, finding the seam in every wall it touched.

Amy sat by the window in Emma’s room. Frost crawled the glass, smearing the street into smudges of grey and white. The shawl on her shoulders did nothing against the chill seeping up through the floorboards.

Across the street, someone had chalked a fresh red circle on the neighbor’s door. Measles, then. The children over there had stopped shrieking and chasing each other days ago. Now there was only the wind.

Emma lay curled in the old cradle, blanket tucked to her chin. Amy knelt, one palm against the heat of her daughter’s forehead, the other locked white-knuckled around the cradle’s rail. Emma’s breath came in thin, uneven scraps, her chest rising like something fighting its way uphill.

The wind climbed from a whine into a full-throated howl, hurling itself against the house, rattling glass, wrenching at the bare arms of the oak outside.

A crack split the air; wood giving way somewhere close.

A branch came down on the wall hard enough to shudder the floor.

The cradle bucked. Amy’s pulse slammed into her throat as the legs buckled and the whole thing pitched sideways. She lunged and caught Emma half a second before the wood hit the floor, splinters scattering like teeth.

Emma’s breath caught, stuttered, kept going, barely. Amy pressed her lips to her daughter’s cheek and rocked her, humming something tuneless and broken, her hands betraying her with their shaking.

Outside, the wind finally let go of the house. Inside, the humming gave out too, and what was left was a silence so total it had weight.

Then Amy made a sound that didn’t belong to a person anymore.

Little Miss Muffet

What a cruel surprise—
Little Miss Muffet's demise!
On her tuffet she sat,
Curds and whey, just like that.
A big spider appeared,
Her heart filled with fear.
Frightened, she fled,
In its web, she's now dead.

JO MUFFET SAT on a stool that complained under her, its crooked legs sinking into garden dirt softened by last night’s rain. Beside her, oatmeal cooled untouched, steam giving up into the cold morning air. She turned the gold ring on her finger; her mother’s, handed over one ordinary afternoon that had somehow become, without warning, important. The ring meant nothing on its own. It was just something to hold.

She didn’t know yet what waited past the garden fence. Only that something out there pulled at her ribs like a fishhook she couldn’t work loose. Branches stirred overhead. Her gaze kept sliding past them, out toward whatever world was waiting to be earned.

Years collapsed into each other, each one shorter than the last.

In a courtroom thick with faces—some hopeful, some past caring—Jo stood and spoke for a family about to lose their house. Her voice had gone rough from overuse. In their eyes she found something fragile that refused to die anyway. When the judge nodded, the win sat in the room a moment, sharp and short-lived, before dissolving into paperwork.

Behind closed doors, deals changed hands. Rules bent until they cracked. She watched lawyers grin too easily after losing, watched others spin a case into something unrecognizable for the right price. Every time she tried to plant her feet, some unseen hand tightened around her ankle and reminded her who actually ran the building.

Her mentor cornered her once in a hallway lit by a buzzing fluorescent tube.

“Jo.” His voice had gravel in it. “Good intentions don’t pay rent here. You want to move up, you play it their way.”

He pushed a red folder into her hands. “Real estate. Messy. Could open doors; none of them clean.”

She flipped through it, red dye bleeding faintly onto her fingers. The faces she’d fought for rose up behind her eyes, every win and loss she’d carried home. Her heart thudded out something that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite its opposite.

Her hand shook when she signed.

The years kept moving, sanding nothing smooth. Now glass walls surrounded her, the city laid out below like something she’d conquered. Her hands sat folded on the desk, one thumb worrying the ring. A letter waited, its edges still sharp from the printer. Across from her, a partner leaned forward, his smile pulled tight as wire.

“I’ve had my eye on you, Josephine. Partner material.” He nudged the letter closer. “A senator, tangled up in a real estate mess. Big names. Bigger stakes.”

He waited, watching her like a man who already knew the answer.

“This is the door, Jo. Walk through it.”

Her fingers closed around the pen, knuckles bleaching pale. The tired faces surfaced again, the people she’d sworn to protect, their voices rising rough and unwanted in her memory. She held his gaze and felt the old pull take her by the wrist, the same net she’d never wanted and now couldn’t cut free of.

Her hand moved anyway.

Little Boy Blue

little boy blue's slumber deep,
      amidst the meadow secrets keep.
sheep wander, cows graze away,
      he’s in the haystack, lifeless they say.
silent dreams, eternal rest,
      little boy blue, a soul now blessed.

UNDER A SKY gone the color of skimmed milk, the fields ran on forever. Grass leaned in the wind like it was listening for something.

Luka sat back against a haystack, his jacket (blue once, now closer to grey) catching what light there was. He loved this stretch of pasture: the wide sky, the hills folding into each other, the sheep’s idiot bleating that never stopped. Far off, the river threw light like scattered coins. The air smelled of hay going dry and dirt going wet.

He breathed it in. Felt his shoulders loosen as the sky shifted color overhead, clouds dragging themselves east.

Then the field changed shape.

Boots hit the ground, not loud, but certain. Shapes peeled themselves out of the treeline, camouflage swallowing them into the grass until only their eyes stayed visible above the black masks, flat and unhurried.

They came like men who’d done this before, closing the distance step by deliberate step. Grass folded flat beneath them.

Luka’s lungs locked. He bolted for the river’s far glint, breath tearing through him in ragged pulls. Behind him: boots crashing through haystacks, voices barking at workers, one voice that seemed aimed at him alone.

He dropped behind another haystack before he’d covered half the ground, heart slamming, throat raw, the stalks biting into his arms as he pressed himself flat.

A hand closed on his collar. A voice leaned in close enough to fog his ear: Little boy blue, no one’s coming.

Luka never registered the boots driving into his back, his stomach. Never heard whatever laughter came after.

The sky above him kept right on not caring, and his breath went out of him like something finally let off a leash.

I first posted the dark nursery rhymes (poems) in June 2024. You can read others in Part 1.

Nursery Rhyme Riffs (Part 1)

Author’s Note

This week I decided to lean into despair, just for a moment.

These three stories take inspiration from familiar nursery rhymes, reshaping their simplicity into darker reflections of today’s world. Each tale draws on real struggles beneath the surface.

Amy’s quiet vigil captures the fragility of life amid an outbreak made worse by gaps in public health and social support. Per CNN Health: The US surpassed 1,100 measles cases in two months. Expect more deaths next. Jo Muffet’s path shows how ambition can slowly erode one’s values when faced with the pressure of power. Luka’s experience shines a light on the harsh realities of ICE raids, where fear and injustice fall heavily on those caught in the crossfire, where identity becomes a risk, and justice feels out of reach regardless of legal status.

By weaving these narratives, I wanted to capture how shadows can stretch from childhood memories into the challenges people face now; how innocence meets harsh truths in unexpected ways. These stories aren’t just retellings; they’re calls to notice the human lives behind headlines, to feel the weight of choices made by individuals and systems alike, and to remember that beneath every name is a story.

Upcoming…

• A poem about nurturing love:

  Heartbreaks, 14 March 2026

Thanks very much for reading, subscribing, and sharing the stories, poetry, and essays in this space. If you like a story, poem, or essay, please click on the heart. Also if you are so moved, please leave a comment.