I Imagine She Kept/Dolls

 

 Imagine She Kept/Dolls

Where are the dolls who loved me so,

when I was young?

                            Elizabeth Bishop

Sweet as she was told she was,

the gnawed off fingers

of the doll was all she could see

herself being

told she needed for Christmas.

Each piece of clothing

sewn together again

and again after all

her previous nights of keeping

the dark inside

her open eyes.  She learned first

nights if she kept her

propped in the corner above the edge

of the pillow 

her eyes would stay

open and she would swallow

in the ways only dolls know

how to: all the dropped 

acorns on the roof all the creeping

between the walls and the outside

night.  She'd been through

the mill her elders would say but never

to her which meant only

that she was battle

field commissioned and ready

in her reliable eye (one socket

stuffed with cotton she'd change

to keep her near new one clear

pinched from some catalogue

ordered do-dad or aspirin

bottle, a smidge to fill

the hollow) and they made their way

into the land of nod and over

the counterpane and they kept

their blood and porcelain hand,

fingers crimped fingers broke and worn

to nubs up against the mouth

and try to 'keep still, keep very

very still, or we'll both go down

into it.  Vigil is kept

in such trust funds.  By daytime,

when Doll was tired and laid out straight

as the dead in the middle of the pillow,

a content corpse who was revived

by suppertime, propped in the corner

before dark walked in 

often unannounced as a hollow swallow

she'd be there to see when her mistress 

walked in without (she was not

allowed when kerosene

was thin) benefit of light.