My friend Éléanore traced a thick scribble
on the white basement wall when she played with me,
a red waxed line following the motions of her hand,
till a smiling cripple with a huge head and stick legs

peered out from behind the door.
Éléanore herself was obedient, quietly painting
under the watchful eye of her mother, though she cried
sometimes. Nothing wrong with a little fit.

But when Mom came downstairs,
she yelled at Éléanore for creating the jolly red man,
the stain everyone would see. Éléanore cried, sat in the corner for a while,
then returned to painting calmly at the kitchen table.

Je l’ai pas fait exprès, she said,
I didn’t do it on purpose.
And she sat and imagined what the red jolly man’s
friends might look like.