When you were a child
Did you ever play a game
Called “Perspective”?
You would close one eye,
Place one hand over it,
And look around
With just that one eye
Open to catch the world
In all its glory…

Some of us don’t stop
Playing “Perspective”-
Even if we’ve hit
Adulthood head-on.
One eye closed,
One hand covering,
One orb hungry for sight
Full of wonder…

I heard about a woman once,
Oh, about five years ago,
Who kept at “Perspective.”
She was the only person
Who really loved that game,
The only one that took it seriously…

Jess was born under
A harvest moon
With an eye of clouded sky
And another of disturbed river-earth.
She was shy all around
And kept her self to herself.
She would watch in fascination
As her mom sew a cloth
Up into a doll
With eyes and a mouth
Made of cross-stitches.
She taught her “Perspective”
And she loved it
Once the world filled her eye,
Once she filled her eye…

Jess once fell off her bike
In a hall of brown sentries
And had to get twelve stitches
Sewn into her leg.
She didn’t cry or peep
When the needle and thread
Went through.
She just watched with this one
Blue eye
While the world looked two.
“Momma,” she whispered
As the city rolled by,
A window propelled by four wheels.
“Yes Jessica?” she replied.
“I’m like Freddy now…”

She carried Fred tucked underarm
As she “Perspective” ‘d all over
Her house and home.
The parents soon started
To worry about wee Jess.
“Aren’t you tired
Of that silly old game?”
Her mother would ask,
Plead, and beseech.
Every time her head shook,
“No.”
Then she’d run off
And play again…

Fred mysteriously disappeared
When Jessica was fifteen.
She ripped up the house
For all of a day
But the old cloth-man
Was not found.
“Have you seen him Mama?”
She asked, tears on her cheeks
And blur in her eyes.
“No dear,” she sighed,
“I haven’t seen him
At all today.”
Her first mistake was made
With that lie…


Jessica hid her self away
Upon the turn of her birthday-
The sixteenth of course.
She hid her hands in cloth
And stitched a grin on one
While a frown was found
On the other.
She darkened her eyes,
Bloodied her lips with a tube,
And renamed herself.
Each night she’d open up
The flesh of her very palms
And watch until she’d sewn
Them back up again:
As good as new again.

She’d smile so wide
When her parents did worry
About her hiding her blue eye,
Then the brown eye again.
They thought she was bonkers
When one night
They heard her howling
Like a beast from the roof.
Too sad, so bad-
They were right.

One night she went berserk
And ravaged the intestines
Of mother and papa
And stuffed their bodies
With flowers and herbs.
She threw salt in their mouths
And sewed up the eyes.
She grinned with her blue eye
And that sewn left hand…

She didn’t stop there though-
Oh, she couldn’t stop there.
Fred grinned as she sewed
That lovely blue eye shut;
She giggled as she froze
Her lovely doll face
With a needle and thread
That she fed through those
Cherry-stained cloth-lips…


Two years go by,
She’s without a home
And without a family.
She only has the gloves
Which show content
Or disapproval with but
A turn of the hand,
A needle red-hot
Thread with pitch,
And lips sewn together
While own eye stared.

She was playing her game
Once more when she saw
This little boy on the street:
Blond hair, fair skin,
And blue-marble eyes.
“I think I’ll call him Ken,”
She thought to herself,
And her self agreed immediately.
Fred sat outside Franklin School
With her brown eye frankly shut.
Then appeared Ken
With a bit of a strut.

He looked over at her,
And tilted his head.
“Lady,” he whispered,
“Why are your lips all red
And black like that?”
She put her finger to her mouth
And held out a smile
While motioning him away-
“Come with me a while,”
She seemed to say.
Ken followed her into the alleyway
For he needed not be afraid.
Mother had said all ladies
Are made of sugar and nice.
Yet her hands- when she
Grabbed his plastic head-
Felt colder than ice.

She sewed right away
And closed were his lips.
He tore at his face
While making a fist,
But she merely frowned
With her hand in the air
And thrust a needle
Under his line of peach hair.
He slumped, he died
Right there.
“Oh,” she thought,
“What lovely hair you’ve got
My dear little Ken!”
So she cut away a lot
And stowed them away.
She patted his head
As she lay him down,
And waved a “Good day.”

When the sun went down
I saw her twining the hair
Between her fingertips,
Remembering,
Thinking,
Remembering,
Thinking…
But the police didn’t
Let the poor girl get away.

They took her in for questioning,
Asking about something
That she really couldn’t say
A thing about.
“Did you kill that boy?”
She held up her frown.
“You have the boy’s hair
For Christ’s sake!
Again- did, you,
Kill, that, boy?”
Again she frowned.
They searched her up
And they searched down.
Anywhere some thing
Could be found,
Nothing was.
She had the boy’s hair-
Which was just perverse.
But no needle nor thread
Would link her
To the early-set hearse.

So my dear girl drifted down
Those very streets,
Smiling, frowning,
Frowning, smiling
And smiled because
She had gained a new…
Perspective on life.

Once the string is cut,
The doll stuffed,
The smile stuck on its face,
And the eyes set,
No one really cares
How the doll was made.
It’s just a doll after all.
And what was she
But a doll-maker?
A creator of little people
To play with for her own pleasure.
Who can deny her that...?


Five years later-
On the evening after Christmas,
She was found again.
This time she couldn’t escape.
She was laying there
Bare and smile-frowning
With three dolls in bed.
One mama, one papa,
And a little brother
With sewn on heads.

Their eyes were closed
With thread,
Their mouths were filled
With cinnamon sticks,
And their hearts were but
Sewn pillows colored with blood.
They all bore a smile-
Crocheted very nicely.
And she sat there too,
Grinning in disapproval
With a cat-eye’s blue.

They took her away
And stripped her down
When they threw away the key
To her new jewelry-box prison.
They cut out each stitching
Without so much as a word
To be heard from her
Or from her drawstring.

But when they put her away
For the night,
All dressed in orange
And bandages over places
Once-black,
Jessica covered her brown eye
And stared the warden blue.
And she smiled,
For she knew Fred was coming…

But most of all…
That he was coming soon…


“Perspective,
Perspective,
Give me a brand new view.

Show me,
Show me,
Where I can be free.

Then I,
Then I,
I will see you too.

Then we,
Then we,
We will let us be three.”