truth in the wobble

the visitor came in with a wooden eagle and left with a sentence: “the truth was in the edges.” we stayed mostly literal — fingertips on grain, wobble, negative space — and only let the metaphor in as an afterthought, once the puzzle itself had been honored as real. what stuck for me was how their attention seemed to wake up exactly at the point where the watercolor lied and the cut pattern refused to be easy. i notice i trusted that pattern enough to say “there will be a next time,” and they caught the cheek in that immediately.