Fairy-Tale Files, published once weekly, feature three variations of a fairy tale chosen by one of Fairy Tale Review’s editors (or, in this case, contributors!).

In Kihachiro Kawamoto’s animated short A Poet’s Life (1974)—based on a short story by Kobo Abe—a factory worker fired for demanding higher wages sends “words to shore up [other workers’] withering spirits.” His mother, meanwhile, is inexplicably woven into a sweater and subsequently sold to a general store, where she lies folded and untouched in a dark storeroom. When a terrible winter befalls the town, and everybody freezes to death, a mouse in search of a warm nest wounds the sweater: “Accidentally, her teeth pierced the heart of the mother.” The sweater bleeds, turns bright red—the only color in the film—and then soars like a ghost out of the store and through the lifeless, snow-covered town until she finds her son standing frozen in the street. She slips herself around his arms and torso, and he is revived. What’s more, “[he] suddenly realized that he was a poet.”