disarm me with your smile -
purity never cut so deep,
candy sweet and sugary burns,
spurning nothing but
memories of yesterday
and the little child still left in me,
having never grown up- desperately attached,
clinging to the dolls of his youth.
(there's a part of you that
never truly lets go, you know.)
don't speak -
don't part porcelain lips and
crack the fond construction
I've made of you,
the perfect idea of you,
left over from years of acting out
parts in each others' games.
(my role was always true-
you were made to always change costumes.)
don't keep your doe eyes fixed on me
until I wither in denial
somewhere deep inside,
hidden long ago for
no one else to find and
play house.
(I've been custom-furnished
too many times already.)
don't touch me -
I don't know which of us would
shatter first. My brutal clumsiness
- or clumsy brutality,
as you would twist it -
would fracture this practiced composure,
and I am finished with
paying for damages
- you break it,
you buy it -
and no one wants a
splintered doll as company.
(such wretched creations work
too well as mirrors.)
I will swaddle me in
warm blankets of security,
blind belief that fantasies of
satin silk impressions bear the facts,
that perfect plaster and
China-doll figures can really
never break.


















