Porcelain Prairie

I will never forgive the porcelain dolls unbroken

By the sticky hands of childhood.

Shrill screams and dirty nails never ripped the pretty hair

From their scalps or pulled at their flesh until it didn’t fit.

They were untouched by hands grabbing too tight,

Popping heads from shoulders and lassoing them

Around tiny waists like trophies.

.

They were coddled.

Cared for and loved.

Free of the ruinous narcissism of a young child.

.

Those miraculous dolls unmangled by tantrums

Haunt my glued-together limbs,

The revolutionary beating heart in my chest.

I envy them. Despise them. Dream of them.

I am capable of no other reactions to those painted lips

Splitting into untroubled smiles

Besides feral, uncontrollable, fractured rage.

.

It burns.

Eats me alive.

Gnaws on my bones until they break;

Until I am crushing my skull between my hands.

.

I can never forgive the porcelain dolls

For having their happiness;

Their happily ever afters and crowns of flowers.

I won’t ever forgive them for their effortless joy.

They danced in white robes of lace, laughing, mocking,

While I was breaking against the shore.

.

Beaten.

Slammed against hard earth

Until my vision fuzzed, faded, and permanently shifted.

.

The world is black and white and grey.

I am stuck in the ether of what was done,

Fixated and obsessed over the palette I have been given

Because I have seen those porcelain dolls.

In their eyes sparkles the colors of the world.

Their tongues go red with it.

.

They lap up the scarlet sunrises.

I bleed into the rivers.

They fly in the blue sky.

I flounder in the water.

.

The dolls parade up high, glorious mountain peaks,

Leave identical footprints in the sand dunes.

They touch the cool waters of clear rivers,

Suck on early sunlight like hard candy,

And dance in daisy fields, barefoot, without a hint

Of terror in their eyes,

While I am locked in place.

.

Unmoving. Unblinking.

Staring at the clouds breathing on the horizon,

Frozen.

.

My feet have plunged roots deep into the prairie,

Sprawling in every direction the compass reads

While the wind swipes my tears into the tall grasses.

The earth nurses on my sorrow.

With porcelain limbs barely mended, I have no choice

But to allow the dry dirt to suckle on my past.

.

I can only stand as the storms sweep over the plains.

.

They are the pretty butterflies migrating across mountains,

Valleys, streams, and open acres coloured by flowers.

They are the feathers of a bird, flashing, flying to heights

That would make me crumble into hundreds of pieces.

They are adventurers able to touch and kiss and laugh,

Ever moving like the winds above my reach.

.

The dolls were never broken.

Infuriated hands never snapped open their bones

But then, their marrow never leaked into the earth.

It never saturated the grass with their spirit

Nor did it gather at the bottom of fast-moving creeks

With the sediment of ancient oceans, old life.

.

I have unfurled into something large

Which hums when the clouds go dark.

The violent delights of the world leave me unruffled.

Birds whisper their journeys in my ear.

Snails sleep on my palms while bats roost in the snarls

Of unkempt hair licked blonde by the sunlight.

.

I’ve become a landmark.

A fixed point that sprouts flowers from my lips for the bees

And holds the web of spiders from my eyelashes.

.

The unbroken dolls are explorers.

Glittering eyes and smiles snap across the wilderness,

The flash of a human camera capturing ferality.

They press footprints into the ground that are

Knocked away

By one strong exhale of an autumn sky.

.

What are those perfect smiles when held up

Against the flaming canopy?

What are those unblemished cheeks,

Rosey with delight, when pressed beside the

Browning dirt yawning with fatigue?

.

Memories that will not stand.

Faces that will remain unremembered.

Scrapbook pictures and little more.

.

These broken pieces, fractured by cold rage,

Have planted pieces of me in the soil.

I stand in solidarity with the centurion sycamores,

The gnarled oaks who have held the decaying bodies

Of poor men weary from travel,

And the beautiful birches always watching, guarding.

.

I have become more than a passing traveller.

My bones are a fixture.

This blood feeds the oceans.

My tears splash, ever-giving rain to the soul of the world.

And I have transformed into something

Uniquely universal.

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Silver Serpent Books

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