pressed behind

a soft-edged glass block

 is the young girl              you inquired about

  her  small  face                locked in terror 

was painted                        years before            

  her screams                      captured    

 an unkind photograph        her despair      on fire

thick with oils       and the scent of a

violent turperntine                                     

and  pressed against    the thick, icy wall

 she lives, small   locked deep                

within a belly’s canyon  where  hunger      endless

rains down       trying to fill her           already-overflowing

and stuffed…

  save me, she whispers    on occasion   

words caught in  stale, aging air   still thick with remembrance 

 while munch’s  fine portrait     of her

 graces the museum   of  a captor’s      lost and neglected soul   

  ‘We want more than a mere photograph of nature. We do not want to paint pretty pictures to be hung on drawing- room walls. We want to create, or at least lay the foundations of, an art that gives something to humanity…An art that arrests and engages. An art created of one’s innermost heart.’ Edvard Munch