Tiny Worlds

Whole worlds adorn my bedroom walls:
a dolls’ house, still life within; dolls,
and a line in collectable animal figures,
dressed, bipedal, with their own lives, places to go,
cats, dogs, squirrels, all kinds; here a child,
there a man or a woman, a tiny world of love.

I used to play with them, at life and love
and still do, sometimes, within those four walls.
I will always be the child
who filled her room with dolls.
Disappointing, sometimes, when I go
out and meet the people that inspired the figures

because a mouse or bear or human figure,
in his tiny world, loves
so easily.  People come and go
and build their walls,
some poker-faced, unyielding as dolls,
others forthcoming as children.

You were like a child
in a toyshop when you found me, a figure
for your collection.  You called me ‘doll’.
When you said you loved
me I brought down my walls,
one by one, until you said you had to go.

You’d had enough, wanted to go
somewhere adult, leave the child
within her nursery walls,
abandoned.  Figures,
I thought.  I never was lucky in love.
I cried like a weeping doll

for hours.  I regret that now, letting even my dolls
see me cry over a nobody, who comes and goes
so easily.  I sank into my tiny worlds, imagined the love
between husband and wife, parent and child,
but it’s not just my invention.  Those figures
were designed to be together, within suburban walls.

You said I had the mind of a child.
Perverse, you thought, in such an adult figure
with which you had your fun, and stayed behind your walls.

© A.R. Collins, 2013