Sarah J. Sloat, Magic Bus, 2020 (Artist Instagram)
Collage, 4.5 x 4 inches
Moon face palominoed with jam, your inner child
perches on your shoulder, Keds playground-swinging
a perfect hole through the place where they say
your heart is. Hidden deep beneath carved beet-slick
muscle—she’s there too, when it suits her, bathtime
like a murder scene. In your nightmares, she’s at the wheel
of your old car and you’re in the back, asleep. One morning,
you find an old phonebook lying on the driver’s seat.
Salt and matches under her little mattress, wet stones
in every one of her pockets. Baby witch, fingertips
every color of paint at once. On good days she sits
at her tiny wooden desk—as long as she has paper
she’ll be fine. Altar, pulpit, drafting table, you should see
the shit she draws: the kind of cartoons that make you
reach for the wine. And what to do? Do you hold her
Dum Dum-sticky paw & hopscotch the streets to pieces?
Send her to bed with no dinner? Let her watch R-rated
flicks in the basement all night? She’s in your junk drawer,
your attic museum—my god, she’s gotten into the good gin.
What will you do with her, what did she do to you,
what did Mama do with you? Every corner of this world
is a cage. Pray to god your love’s enough to free her.