Pandora

Pandora was a doll with a plastic head & a boneless fabric body full of give. Her eyes were a smiling blue you scraped with a thumbnail one day to see what lay beneath: blank plastic. Pandora was a doll with plastic arms that could be bent into the semblance of a hug. From a high perch she watched the bears multiply on the bed, expert listeners, burly avatars of comfort. When the circus master’s mad wife came to give them all away to charity, Pandora alone with her hopeless eye was spared. You wept until you couldn’t see & wailed until your voice turned to a whisper; the bears stayed gone. Your sad box of a room held only Pandora.