The Doll Museum
for Holly
The stone dolls on exhibit, eyeless, armless,
uncovered from Egyptian children’s tombs,
look heavy even for the strongest child,
not like the dolls that lined both of our rooms
and shared the bed with us when we slept over
at each other’s houses, their bodies light
and elbows bendable, their eyelids mobile,
hair that tangled with our own at night.
“When you’re asleep,” the grown-ups winked at us,
“they come to life.” We never pressed our cheeks
against cold stone, our dolls warm to the touch.
When you were gone for days that turned to weeks,
your parents showed me photographs of you
with happy-faced balloons tied to your bed
and cards taped to the walls, the children’s ward
too far for visits. “I’m getting better,” you said
when we talked on the phone. The doctor’s knife
could not have caught you any more off-guard
or left me less alone; I had my dolls—
though soon they lay on tables in the yard
with price-tags. Even then they looked alive,
survivors with no sickness to survive.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2009 by Caitlin Doyle, "The Doll Museum," from The Warwick Review, (Vol. III, no. 2, 2009). Poem reprinted by permission of Caitlin Doyle and the publisher.