The Dolls

          1

With her last will

and testament

my aunt left me

a china doll

with hair of golden

curl and baby blue

eyes.

 

          2

As a child she was locked

away behind glass

and cherry wood. I tried

to lift a sippy cup

to wet her un-

blinking eyes.

 

          3

I was four years old,

playing in my cousin’s

bedroom when

I found the mutilated

doll.

 

She was naked

and had crayon

scribbled over her body.

I couldn’t count

the bruises of purple,

red, and green.

 

Her hair had been hacked

off and some pulled

out to reveal the holes

drilled in her head. Her

feet were cut off, jagged ends, to

reveal how her legs were hollow.

 

Her hands were chewed

flat, marked by bumpy

molars. Her eyes

had been punctured

by a pen, blue ink stained

scleras.

 

I wrapped her head in toilet

paper and made a chair

out of legos, four wheels

to give her back the wind

in her holes. I couldn’t cover

her eyes because I

wanted her to know

 

it was okay to cry.

My mother found her and

took her away. My aunt’s

daughter died that same day

I was carried to the white room

and made to talk to a lady

with black glasses and thin pencil

lips. Why’d you do that

to dolly?

 

That’s when all the dolls

got locked away and Auntie

came by to rock me in her arms

and cry into my hair.

I used to knock

on my legs to hear

if they were hollow

and bite my fingers

to trace the dents in my skin

but they never

bruised.

 

        4

That was all

a long time ago and I

never told them she

wasn’t mine. Holding

that china doll I thought:

beneath those pretty curls

are the holes that are drilled

into all our heads, where

we hide the tears of the dead.