The Doll After Play

1.

Like anything else, this is being ready for something.

I’ll write your memories for you, he says.
They’ll come out better that way.
Yes, I have many intentions, so few deeds.

Imagine the possibilities! This body is endless.
As many pieces as you can name.
Yes, I see a body there. She is nothing like me.

There is nothing hidden on her. I could look at her
all day. You want to be looked at, don’t you?
Ah, yes, look again, again, again, again, again.

This is finally right. This is right. (Taking out
the camera.) This is a dream. You are a dream. (Sweeping
the hair away from the face.) Speaking of which.

Are you ready? I’m ready. Get ready.

2.

Ready. There are lips, a smile, even.
Eyes behind the mask. I can see
past my features.
The rest of it—throat,
belly, hair—makes me a real woman.
A voice? That’s unnecessary.
I speak with knees, ankles, hips,
steel ribbing, plaster, itch,
and with my look.

He has placed a metal band around my
head. It must be done,
for he has chosen to keep it open
so he can see my secret thoughts.
Something in there keeps growing,
widening the aperture, straining
the rivets.
Something in there keeps growing,
though I can’t say what.

3.

He sets the camera on its legs,
pulls the binding tight in his hands.
He says, I think we are ready to begin.

He poses me against the wall,
against a tree, on the stairs, on the floor,
stretched out, heaped up, tumbling down.

I look so often like a little girl
has abandoned me in play.
I always look abandoned after play.

Yet also as though there is always
someone approaching to finish the game.
He always says, desire makes it final.

4.

His story is that I was, am, have been
waiting, that I was alive before he gave me form.
This is easy enough to believe, but what I remember
are pale shadows haloing my body,
arms that run parallel to mine,
a mouth that almost lines up perfectly
with mine except when I try to speak.
And on this body, this awareness,
there are days that deviate slightly
creating the impression that I have lived
this scene differently.

He mouths to me as though I can understand.
He mouths as though someone else
would be listening.
He keeps his mouth covered with his hand,
spittle flying into his hand,
his eyelids down, spitting,
looking at something, not me.

5.

He has a mouth of mine and won’t give it back.
All day I hear him kissing it.
As though it cares!

Yesterday he had one of my pelvises.
Yesterday he played all day
with its little groove.

When did these parts shiver out of my awareness?
When did they become not me, but a rival of me?
In the photograph there is more than there should be.
More than is possible.

He keeps making additions.
Now there are two heads, four legs, four arms,
four breasts, four buttocks,
any number of joints, sockets, wigs,
ribbons, stockings, shoes. One expression.

There is a limit.

6.

He’ll leave us alone for hours.
He’ll give us brandy laced with hemlock or he’ll give us nothing.
He’ll draw our outline on the floor and lay himself down in it.
He’ll give us sweets we can’t eat, only hold in our mouth.

He’ll pose us in a nativity scene, my head emerging from between my legs.
He may puncture his thumb on a nail.
He’ll take us out of our drawers and leave us in the woods for days, the sun
     bloodied,
the pale grass reflecting our shade.

And the night’s darkness on the tip of our tongue.

7.

There. You see everything now.
I want you when you are panting
on top of someone else. And I am
shut in my drawers. I want you
when you are looking away.
I want you when you are sleeping.
I want you when.

I would like to have one dress
that isn’t torn or tied around my ankles.
What would you wear it to? you may ask.
I will say, It doesn’t matter.

8.

In the dream I wake with the drip of last night’s rain
falling off the leaves onto my skin, feeling the cords around my ankles,
     my wrists,
knowing if I had ears I could hear the cracking of branches,
the stillness of all other life, if I had a nose
I could smell the wet earth and my piss.

If you sob while you create us, it makes no difference,
not when this is the scene you compose from our bodies.
I admit, there is a power in the effortless way we are brutalized.
Even the dress is unnecessary.
Just one sock fallen down around the ankle
evokes more than our entire face.
Forget the face. The pathos is in the smudged shin,
the exposed ankle, the scuffed buckled shoe.
All this is observed in the attitude of repose,
or of hiding during play, or the instant of hesitation
before springing into flight.

9.

I am starting to think that.

Now I am starting to think.
I think into my sockets, into the washbasin,

the trunk, the stairs, into his gaze.
I think hard into my limbs, into my belly,
my buttocks, my breasts, my tenuous neck.

I think hard into the camera
because it is there and into
the pictures under his bed. I think into

cups and saucers, his razor, the phone, dinner.
And into him.

I set the camera on my spare legs and aim.
I think now we are ready.

Rebecca Cross lives in New England. Her work has appeared in elimae, The Abacot Journal, Apocryphaltext, NANO Fiction, and Reflection's Edge.