Even as a small girl, I got mad with any talk about shutting someone away. A literal child, I had a lot of questions about this and other confusing tales supposedly for children that no one was able to effectively answer for me.

So I remixed this old rhyme and added a new stanza detailing the wife’s escape plan. The poem, like other things that are more than 20 years old, was lost.

Inside the pumpkin: gingham curtains, a table, a smoking chimney, a tiny plant on the windowsill, and a ladder leading to her freedom.