CLAUDIA CORTESE

Lucy,

I’ve shorn the doll’s hair, sprinkled the strands on your bed. I know what you crave—welts on the wrist, a punishment, a cry. You need me to live, and I need you to feel. When I wrote you slept in a box, a box within a box, I meant we all need touch and more touch. There’s a razor in the peach, and your sister plants teeth beneath your bed. Stitch those images to your eyes because only time will tell who’s the wolf at your window—if his strings of saliva will bless or burn you. When I said you hoped your father wouldn’t hear the Oreos crunch in your mouth, I meant to say the body remembers woodsmoke and barns, the insects buzzing above you. The cypress is blue-veined and beautiful—your ticket out of this girl-forsaken town.

Love,
Claudia