Woman with Bangs

Cayenne Bradley

I'm slumped in front of a blue wall that is empty except for my shadow, wrapped in a bulky shawl, face bathed in dull green light. Black bangs cut jagged, too short, the only name I'll ever have. My eyes are drooping and lightless, my mouth a crooked smear, too resigned to be a scowl. I can feel the world staring at me, but I never meet its gaze. I both despise the attention and resent that I get so much less of it than the others; I am only a lesser-known work of the Blue Period, nowhere near as famous as that old guitarist and certainly not Casagemas. I've spent over a century hung up on strange walls, carted across continents, and touched only when absolutely necessary by careful gloved hands, less like something sacred and more like something infectious, as if the blue that stained my creator from the inside out might bleed right through me. I can never not be his, never not be him, even though I had no choice in my own creation.