China Doll

Dainty, delicate, soft—words that stick like tree sap,

like super glue and honey and plastic

melted into my skin, no matter how much

I bleed from scraping them off.

More words—tiny, pretty, gentle.

More sap, more glue, more heated plastic burning through skin.

Invisible neon signs saying handle with care.

A china doll with glass bones, a teddy bear with all its stuffing firmly inside.

And still more words, more labels, more names.

Name after name after name until I'm drowning in them.

Sweetheart, crazy, nerd, stupid.

So many more names but you never use mine.

New words like creative, bitter, quiet.

Words chosen by me and picked like berries in a field.

Yes—that one, I want that one. But not that one,

never that one, but maybe this one.

New and old words mixed together, an amalgamation.

The doll and the bear still sitting but not quite the same,

cut open and empty and begging for something new

to fill them and make them whole once again.