Phoenixes emerge from their ashes, but

nothing rises from a witch's pit, because the curse she put on it as she screamed in rage and pain scares away the children and the adults and the plants.

Nothing rises from a witch's pit, which is still warm days, weeks, months later. We seek out its warmth and don’t mind the screams on the wind. We shelter from the cold as the village shivers.

Nothing rises from a witch's pit but memory, and she is there with us as we remember, and huddle, and mutter her words, we outcast girls, we future witches, and we wait for spring.