Dave Bonta's poem looks back at a childhood toy and the loss that makes her matter. Pandora is a doll with a plastic head and a soft, "boneless" body, and she is not especially lovely or comforting. The speaker, addressed as "you," once scraped her blue eyes with a thumbnail, hoping to find something underneath. There was only blank plastic. That small act of curiosity, and its disappointment, sets the tone.
The real heart of the poem is the day the stuffed bears are given away. They were "expert listeners," the true source of comfort, and the child loses them all. Only Pandora, with her damaged "hopeless eye," is left. The crying that ends in a whisper is painful to read, and the final image of a "sad box of a room" holding one doll feels bare and lonely. The mood is quiet, bleak, and tender. Pandora's name hints at a box of troubles, and here the trouble is simply losing what consoled you.