Doll

She was a doll that you played with for a while.
She was pretty, her china lips so plump and red,
her fake brown eyes glistening with opaque paint,
like she was crying,
or just happy to be here.

You could pick her up and put her down,
she was at your disposal.
She was alive just for you,
and you had her in your hand,
but you didn't treat her delicately.

They all said you were young,
that you didn't know any better.

She tried to say something,
whispering could be's and have been's,
little fairytales and make-believes,
with her painted-on red lips unmoving to what she really wanted to say.
"Don't use me this way," she would have pleaded,
"I have given you my heart and my soul.
I want to be here forever, with you, my darling friend"

You played with her, used her.
In a game of Beauty Parlor,
you cut off all her hair.
"It will regrow," you told yourself,
but that's not how it works.

As she lay years later, battered and bruised,
her face caked with dust of time,
she always wondered, would you have listened,
really listened,
to her broken language, rusty from disuse?

It's not your fault,
You were too young,
you didn't know any better.