Box Explosions

When Paula came to me that morning, everything finally made sense. I had always had a sense, call it intuition, but I just always knew.

Ever since she was a baby, I thought she was a little different than the others. Paula was my first baby, so I didn’t have much experience, but somehow it isn’t experience that makes these things apparent.

She looked physically equal to other children her age.

She spoke properly and articulately for a child of six.

Emotionally, she wasn’t too happy or too sad.

She was never erratic or fussy.

She was sociable and amiable.

And yet, here I am saying that she was different. Well, what made her different?

Look at her! Just look at her.

Would you call that normal? Would you say: “Hey, there is that Paula kid, nothing different or disconcerting about her.”

I can’t explain it to you any better than that. If you can’t see for yourself what it is that unsettles me about her, then maybe there is something wrong with me.

She’s a child, for goodness sake. I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to think this about her. I can’t help it.

I have watched her every day of her life and to be perfectly frank, she has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I never said anything because, well, because it’s awful to feel this way about your own child. But when Paula came to me that morning, everything finally made sense.

Everything had come together. She looked at me with those perfectly sketched almond-shaped eyes and a mountain of bows and ribbons on her head, and as she pulled at a pink strip I was forced to look away.

I think my baby is possessed. But what is worse… I think a box exploded on her head. 

(ART by CLIO LUNIA)