after Picasso (1937) and Coraline (2009)

you can learn to love this version of me, one ear and my mouth in the wrong place, everything where it shouldn’t be. it’s kind of like us, isn’t it? i could see us eating spoonfuls of yellow paint over dripping buckets, licking our lips till they turn into daffodils, biting our nails like jawbreakers. did you hear that they stole the weeping woman from the Gallery of Victoria in 1986? they found her 17 days later, undamaged in a locker at the railroad station. i wonder if it felt nice to be wanted. in a better world, the beldam has buttons for eyes and the fields bleed dry, but time travels in excess. the tunnel to reality is vast and slow and inescapable towards the end. what’s your favorite color, baby? i’m fixing the needle with thread.