Doll Store

June 1st, 1900 

Light. Bright light. The infant feels an urge to move her chest up and down. A bundle of pure innocence is soured by its first act. Breathing out the pureness of a being that has not yet done wrong. The air like poison creeping into the crevasses of the red plump skin of a newborn, but the poison is sweet, and sweet things aren't always bad, right? A small voice whispered to the bundle they had just birthed, the last time that voice would be gentle.

“Baby,” the mother cooed, “Hello, baby.” 

November 21st, 1905 

She watched the sweet liquor pour down her father’s throat, peeking through the door crack into his office. She braced herself for the ghost. Her father, so stupid to willingly open the door of his body to this poltergeist. His eyes blank and full of rage; it was bad tonight. She cowers in the corner of her mind, waiting for her father's furious eyes to invade her mind. 

She would learn in time. She would learn how to hide. She would learn the weight of reputation, and she would learn of her unimportance. 

July 12th, 1910 

She etched the face of the sky. Charcoal was soft like the days she could lay on her back in the field. Wind and sun, grass and sky. Soft like charcoal, soft like fields of grass that brushed against her knees. She could taste the greens and blues, she could feel the soft kisses that the sun gave to her as a treat. Smooth life flowed down her throat like orange juice on a Sunday morning. When she was alone, she was alive. When she let the sky engulf her, she drank up all the mortality she could. When charcoal is soft, and grass hugs her knees, and suns kiss her

gently, she loves to be. 

October 3rd, 1915 

Rain poured outside the window as she touched her unworked hands to the cold glass. Trapped in walls full of untouched books, preserved writing never to be read, yellow pages clinging to their decaying spine in false hope that the words inked into their skin will once again be loved. Dust collecting on lost memories, slipping farther away as the house gets wider. Trapped in her body, staring at the crying sky. Life was not what she would call her state of being. She was the porcelain doll in her cupboard, the one she could not get rid of. She was a plaything, imprisoned by the whims of the universe, confined by the strings on her wrists tied by her beloved puppeteer. In fear of her father, in obedience to her mother, and engulfed by the rain that plagued this town. 

February 7th, 1920 

Dusk engulfs her, she embraces it, tasting the cool purples of the sky on her tongue. It tasted of her first kiss, bitter and wet, but sweet like plums rushing down her throat. She was older now, she knew better than to trust the happiness of a moment. She could feel her mother cry from afar–in a different house. No longer her affair she said, no longer her problem but she felt an overwhelming burst of need to help in her chest. Occasionally that burst would creep its way to her throat and wrap around her teeth, twisting and curling, begging her to shout but instead, she poured that feeling into the purples of dusk, into the purples of ruined canvas ripped apart and strewn across the floor. She could never get dusk right. The oil paint disobeyed her strokes, wandering through the sky, hopping amongst clouds, tasting first kisses. The taste of love, sweet, unsure, and desperate, the taste she used to get from soft charcoal faded as mistakes turned into catastrophe and paper turned into shreds. At least she would always have the whispers of kisses and the memory of a memory of love. 

December 31st, 1923 

She understood her dad now, the ghost inside the cool brown liquid erased the world as nothing else could. The railing black smoke churning in her veins conversed with the spirit her dad tended to and relied on. They whispered in the back of her mind, they led her in circles, chipping off her porcelain skin until all that was left was the emptiness inside of her and her tied-up wrists urging her to dance. They whispered until she could not remember what it felt to be full, she could not remember what it was to be free. The black smoke pleaded for the ghost, for they were stronger together. She did not want to suffer in this museum any longer, and smoke and wine had the key, all she had to do was let them lead. That's all she had to do.

June 1st, 1925, 12:03 am 

She smiled and apologized to the jug of life that had given her so much. She was greedy, she assured, she could never have enough. Drip drip drip, honeydew, and apples, drip drip drip, charcoal and dusks, drip drip drip, light, blinding light. I will miss you, she thinks with a smile that has not shown its face since blades of grass tickled her, since sun kisses did not end in sunburn, since the sound of charcoal on paper, slow and quiet, eased her senses. It was a smile of yellows and oranges, of roses and sunsets that grip your senses until you are a part of the pink sky. It was a smile that could fool you into believing she regretted it. The smoke creeped out of her at-ease mouth and curled around her neck, sealing her fate, erasing her joy. Life dripped down her throat for the last time, and then she regretted it. 

“Baby,” the girl whispered, “Goodbye, baby.” 

_ 

June 1st, 1925

Light. Bright light. Breath. Innocence. Poison. Déjà vu the infant thought before they realized they didn’t know what that meant. 

July 10th, 1943 

The rumored note in the mail stared at him, sinking into his hands as his fate sank in. The war novel he had read last year, now distasteful. The jokes his friends had made about 18th birthdays, now insensitive. The look in his mother’s eyes, a new look, a goodbye look. There was nothing he could do as red, white, and blue hurtled him out towards a plane soon to be flying amongst rattling bombs. 

“We’re…we’re proud of you, son…we love you, you know that? We love you.” 

All the words they said that night, trying to hide the one they meant most. A family built of iron, a family built of hunting and muscles, scared of the word “goodbye.” 

September 14th, 1943 

He looked at the smoke left by gunpowder and squinted at its rising swirls. He could almost remember clouds, he could almost imagine clouds existing here once; a sign of peace unimaginable, an incorrect sign that the world was still stable. As his hands that have done wrong lift up to savor this wretched memory by defacing a once pure paper with the little lead he had left, he feels his conscience begging him to stop. He has seen the juice of life ripped away from too many people. He has seen too many people rip life away, he has seen their eyes falter as they see the young face they have denied a future. A cry so horrible it could only be formed by the revolting taste of love being stripped away echoed across the barren landscape. You had to be selfishly grateful that it was not you who had been strangled by patriotism, and you had to be minutely jealous that they were free from here. 

November 5th, 1943

On the floor, he wept at the changing sky as it turned to dusk. He embraced the pervasive thought that this was the end of a life. Blood flowed down his face as he mourned. He could still feel the rocks jab into his heels as the sun peeled the outer layers of his eyes back, still, feeling the sudden jab of pain that forcefully took him out of his body. A ghost watching a battalion’s eyes glisten for the last time. He had hoped that he joined the rest of his men, despite himself. He stole the moment, watching the sky turn to black, expecting to die, he smiled. Savoring what he thought to be his last breath, he thanked the moon. He stood on the cusp of a cliff, he jumped into a doll store, he watched wrinkled hands embroider a small soldier costume. 

The voice of the hands whispered, “Not now,” then he felt unwelcomed hands around his waist, pulling him back onto the cliff. 

November 8th, 1943 

A letter. A brown envelope on a desk. Waiting. He was free now. Free to watch the nights fade away as he does too. A brown letter, a declaration, an invitation to unknown hell, back home. 

March 17th, 1946 

They screamed in his head begging that he join them, why did he get to stay? Why did they get to go? He reaches for the memories of the innocents he used to hold, the reason for life, the greens and blues, and yellows of slow days. The sand, little grains that were put into place just for you to see. The way cold water flows down your throat, clattering desperate to get to the stomach. But to get to those memories he must muscle through the gunshots and battlefields, the image of absolute stillness, unnatural and visceral, a soul slowly leaving the mouth of the dead, a soul slowly decaying with every BANG, with every sorrow, with every coffin draped in the colors that he was meant to die for.

September 13th, 1948 

He did not sleep anymore. He could not bear to see the destruction he had caused, he could not live with the thought that he was wasting a life that could be lived better by all of the still monsters he had witnessed. He did not draw anymore for all he could only draw one face. A face he had traced and held, a face that was made of dewdrops and honey, a face that had never lost its innocence. He could not remember that face for when he remembered it he needed to see it, and when he looked in the mirror he only saw straight lines and wrinkles. So, he did not live. He simply mimicked a life, one without thought or feeling. His smile no longer had dewdrops or honey, his smile had blood and soot, his smile had fear and obedience, his smile had helpless red.

June 1st, 1950 

The guns keep screaming, echoing through his now desolate mind. A mind that had once been decorated with soft hands running through hair and soft lead running on a paper was now killed and replaced by a museum of limp green and blue bodies. A gallery walk through all the eyes that he loved dimming over, and over, and over, a horrible cycle of unjust destruction. The mind of a child who never got to grow, the mind of a gilded person: shiny and new gold on his still bloody hands cover the painful vast space where organs used to be. The world was not real anymore, he was not real, at least he thought he wasn't. The memory of life, the way it dripped, sticky, coating his throat haunted him even more than stillness. The jug of life was now gray and fell down his throat quickly. It was bitter, every drop shriveling his tongue until the alluring acid lost its appeal. So he closed his mouth. A room that seemed to be closing in on him before opened up, he could now see the cavity of life, the beige walls and single window held. Why was he crying? This was what he wanted right? Wait a thought like a worm in an apple crept into his head. A shelf, smooth and wood stared at him. On top of it, life encased in a jar; beauty, innocence, and greed, complaints, deviants, and skies, sitting there stagnant, unassuming. The thought that he could live consumed him as the shelf crept closer. 

“Wait! No wai-!” His last taste of life mingled with blood: sweetness tainted by iron sorrow. 

_ 

June 1st, 1950 

Light. Bright light. Innocence for breath, is it worth it? 

October 21st, 1965 

The weight of the sun rested upon her shoulders, smooth and fiery, an infinite sunburn. The world keeps moving, she realized, the sun keeps picking her up by the neck and carrying her through the night. Infinite, relentless, brightness, no rest, only one star. Eating when necessary, starving when looked at. 

The number on the scale inching lower and lower, but she could never lose the weight of the sun. She was a soft wind in May, she did not make a sound. She was not a light, but a moth sucked into pretty doom. Open fires and open mouths screaming to no one but themselves, letting in nothing but diet pills. 

November 30th, 1974 

A whispering dream haunted her. Smoke twisting and curling into her drawings. The ones that looked so familiar. Whenever she would trace her bones they pleaded that she would listen, but would not say what she was meant to hear. She could not listen, she could not, because it was working, it was. She could not give in when she had come so far. When her ribs could be seen, she proved her beauty. Dawns and early mornings collide into one as she yearns for the

wisdom inside her head. 

December 12th, 1974 

Dreams are not dreams anymore. She is haunted awake, still told to listen, but those words lose their meaning. They live in her shadow, mimicking her footsteps, swinging their arms in unison. They are not happy, they are urgent like the sun when it’s time for morning. Listen, they say, listen. But she did not. It felt twistedly better to continue to wreck her body, reducing herself to nothing. As she drowned her mind out with crumpling black noise, her shadow too reduced its size, its voice quieting. But in rare moments of pure clarity, she sometimes thought that she should listen. 

December 13th, 1974 

She inspected the sun, round and in the center of her body. Tugging at the little skin left on her cold fragile bones, willing it to stay in its deformed state. The sun picked her up, bringing her through the day again and again in the same position: tugging at the skin. How far she had come before she ate lunch. Dressing room mirrors comfort her in their demonizing ways, keeping her on track to reducing her body to the size of the little white star twinkling in the early morning, a blip of time urging her to keep swallowing pills. 

December 15th, 1974 

Her shadows, the ones that urged her to listen, begged her to stop swallowing capsules of thinness. She still did not listen. She could not until they crept out of her feet and flowed down her mouth in her sleep. In her dream she stood in a gray field, surrounded by flatness and decay, the air tasting like a mouth waking up after a 40-day sleep. There was only a shack in front of her. It contained a mess of unhappiness; infinite wisdom sitting on a shelf, in a gray desolate toy

store, watching the same mistake happen over and over again, never able to interfere. She walked into the battered wood shack and stared at the collection of dolls. Porcelain, stuffed, and wooden beady eyes on shelves, the ones in her shadow, urging her to free them. 

“Stay, won’t you? Stay,” They urge, “Stay.” 

They are dressed in soldier uniforms, they are accompanied by brown liquor, they all have art sets, pieces of paper ripped, never able to get dawns right. In a constant dawn, they are reborn into more hopelessness. There she stood, in the center of a toy store, dancing for the audience of herself. A routine they had seen, a routine they had memorized, yet the dolls continue to watch in anticipation, waiting to see if the ending is different. 

A battered half-finished doll sits before her. The humming of a voice, soft and low, paid no attention to her presence. It harmonized with itself, sweeping the room with angelic white wisps, turning the much-breathed air into silk. The hands attached to the voice were withered and wrinkled but still attached to a needle. The pattern of yarn-piercing fabric skin, in and out, in and out, a repetition the old woman was accustomed to. She inspected the worked-on doll in between dance moves. It was transparent like showers of rain, it morphed and blurred the space behind it. She let out a knowing cry, a will to stop, that got the attention of the voice. 

“Hello,” the voice said, finally recognizing her being in the shop. “Hello, I am wisdom.”

December 16th, 1974 

She listened. She listened to her shadow. She interrogated the dolls, learned their lives, heard tales of faces, soft scratches of charcoal on yellow and orange days, the smoothness of a bullet, the intricacies of lace and nightgowns, and the feeling of innocence slipping out of their lungs. She remembered. She remembered the thousand dawns she had seen, the thousand tastes of life that had been ripped away.

Wisdom conversed with her in ancient sweet raspy rhythms. 

“Why?” The word echoed along the gray cavity of her mind, reminding her of her lack of knowledge repeatedly. Why did she deserve to live when all of her souls standing before her had not? 

“Because you want to be saved.” 

This phrase takes the place of why, the words rearranging themselves: saved because you want to be…you want to be saved because…to want because you are saved. The vowels are so familiar, the consonants ones that have been echoed in many a kindergarten class, but she could not understand. She could not suffer the pain of red and orange skies fading to purple any longer, she did not want to. 

“But… but I can’t, I don’t want to,” she said. “How can you know I want to…to stay.” “You saw me.” 

December 31st, 1974, 11:54 pm 

She had lived this day many times before, but this time she had wisdom. 

June 1st, 1975, 12:04 am 

The urge to continue what she knew scared her. She looked up at the jug of life slowly dripping into her mouth, she had done this so many times before, she had made the same mistake so many times before. She had tasted the same rotten life on her tongue, she had seen the decaying world around her. But the moon wasn't rotten, nor the sky, nor the soft wind on the mountain by her house, nor her mother’s overworked hands on her scalp, the slow back and forth of the calloused hands behind their right ear. Back and forth, up and down, back and forth up and down. The nights when the world stopped moving, the soft rustle in the trees engulfed by moonlight, just for her to see. Wisdom whispered into her ear, “dusks, remember dusks,” and for the first time, she saw the purple sky at 25.

June 1st, 2047 

Her wrinkled hands clasped the ones they had come to know so intimately. The world was darkening like it had done so many times before. She knew what this felt like, she knew no suspense. Her mouth is open and ready for the last drop of life, sweet now. Her tongue curled around the juice, trying to savor it. As all she had done scattered across her taste buds, she smiled, creasing the ever-growing wrinkles of her face one last time. Her last taste of life, sweet and sticky like molasses, soft and powdery like charcoal, thin and wispy like smoke, tasting purple and red, and black and white, and blue and green, and yellow and orange. All she could see was light, bright light. 

_ 

June 1st, 2047 

The light in the infant’s eyes was one they had seen before, yet were not accustomed to. The newborn feels they must move their chest. They worry that this is a mistake, yet they do not know why. The infant allows air into their lungs and realizes that it is not poison that is flowing to their lungs, but life. Dusks and charcoal and wars and liquor and nights flow into the lungs, the air is not pure but it nourishes nonetheless. A voice that can be forgiven whispered small wisps of air onto their baby’s face, 

“Baby,” the mother cooed, “Hi baby.”