STORY OF A DOLLHOUSE

Boy desires dollhouse. Over blueberry

Slurpee smashed underfoot his two feet are stomping

sticky, and father is growing more worrisome because it

follows, naturally, a dollhouse must be filled with dolls

and all the things a doll can mean. And Boy is not knowing or

caring about the difference between a doll and an action figure.

The definition of an action figure, of course, being those

doers endowed with limbs to flex; taut joints enhanced

for hyperarticulation. A pair of hands perfectly pre-ringed to

clutch perfect weapons: the gun, the machete, a hammer.

Traditional tools of power, armed with agency, muscle-

clad, not to be confused with a cackle of accessories—

the hairbrush, the hand mirror, a slender vase of flowers.

Things designated to adorn and/or beautify a backdrop.

To render cut[e] all the ones who get ritually posed,

struck inflexible at a knee or locked stiff at the shoulder blade,

as if asleep in an old crone’s curse. In other words, dollhouse

as another word for cage.   And Boy now is wandering over to the

old book section, thinking of fairy tales and all the seeds that the

winds of story scatter. Of Bluebeard, secret rooms, and blood-smeared

keys. Secret rooms, witches, wives grown too curious for their own good.

And all the ogres and trolls and paths lined with sharpened stones. The

many gobbled-up children who once lost their way through the woods,

and countless tales that get told and retold. Encoded, enshrined,

tucked away between teeth of precious clockwork cogs or

crushed beneath the pinkest of tongues. The red whispers

that carry through, lash like thorns too soft for their own petals.

Boy desires dollhouse and does not know why, does not care.  

Knows only the flapping of eyes like fairy wings—some quickening

fury to beat back a rush.        Blink—Shudder—Stop

Blink again, but only to see with these

wider-open eyes

Matthew Burnside is the author of Postludes (KERNPUNKT), Rules to Win the Game (Spuyten Duyvil), and the digital novel series DEAR WOLFMOTHER (Heavy Feather Review).