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– Doll’s House –

My favourite tea cup
sits high upon the center shelf;
Too much pride
for too little wealth.
All of those finer dishes
have been years untouched,
and we have dined our meagre suppers
upon plastic and paper.
The toys with which we played
were broken and outdated to our age.
All of the clothes that we had ever worn
were piled into heaps upon the floors,
never to be cleaned,
yet neither to be discarded.

We lived,
but we were not really alive.

Time decayed our home to dust.
Water left running over fixtures
that tainted and turned to rust.
All of our frustrations
held within the space
became concentrated.
The fruits of our labours
became dried and desiccated.
Vermin had claimed every corner,
and those finer cups and glasses
were never made fit for use.
This ruined house is a reminder
of all our past abuse,
of all the care and comfort
that we were denied
by the lack of a loving instinct,
by the lack of a will to try.
Among the broken things,
we were left to die,
forgotten like flowers
that were cut and dried.

And when we finally opened the windows,
when we finally broke the silence
to let the light into our shadows
we could see that those untouched treasures
kept as relics on their dusty shelf
had taken up the space
Where that comfort should have been.

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