The Dollhouse

Chapter 1

She held hearts in her palms, those split and crooked petals numbly beating, bleeding marmalade songs. Pulsating bits blew about the never-ending skin, boundless, lest you be contained by those glass frames. We didn’t hold hands back then, we held hearts and lived inside glass globes. Mannequins we were, defined by ink and tender metal. The mornings fell and nights rose inside this dollhouse. Glitter dribbled amongst the sky, expelled along the outward galaxy, an intangible far-away world. So small. Confined and precious.

More immense than the wax smile and painted eyes were the small, intricate, and infinitely explosive sighs that engulfed the space around us. Entirety secured itself within our bosoms, the entire universe swelled within one delicate and wasted moment. Not in the wasted ways of wonderers who wallow and wine instead of whining or welcoming the wary uncertainty of the unknown. No. It was very much in the driveling and maddening sort of drunkenness that bends fragile lenses and scoops woodchips as makeshift snow, painted for the purpose and sprinkled over the empty roofs and plastic flowers. Wobbly fists perched over midriffs and scuffed over flushed faces. Breaths lingered, guided by those brushed blushing quirks.

Earth was a map that we orbited, compelled by the solar intensity, we as two moons clung to one another. Glowing, spinning, twirling in the circles of serenity and chaos. Traipsing on the newly fallen leaves, crisp under our naked feet as we waded through the debris of wilting flowers and chalked up gravel. Death, inhaled with each breath, caressed tender crevices and locked itself within heart chambers, growing heavier with each leaded step. We leaned on one another, beckoning the other to collapse against the willful statues we hardened ourselves into so that the world wouldn’t quite consume us. With age, it seems, we deteriorate and shed layers until we’re raw, vulnerable. So we throw our spades like daggers thrust out from sleeves to keep everyone at a distance.

Solitude is a line extending in two directions, infinite and separate. It parallels the universe, settles on its plane, but never reaches it, merely mirrors it. Souls are reflections, drawn from lonely nights shrouded in shallowly lit rooms with the meek whispers that it’s okay to be alone but it never really is. Loneliness is that sting. That icky clinging of an inkling, that almost, maybe, if I could have, no would have…but I didn’t and damned if I could try again…I’d repeat the same relation because the world is giant equation. We plug into it our actions and somewhere along the line things are fractured, bent out and distorted, inverted and churned amongst the digits and literal transitions that graze minds and accent the needing heeded on an entirely essential molecular level.

Between the essences of small smiles hung over breezy laughs and romantic traps, joy becomes something tangible. As sunsets lean over sunrises, inside jokes and sweet silences surrender all things concrete. Branches sweep over afternoon whims, thrust into evenings that extend into morning cocoas and wispy stares. Together is a breath we hope never ends, but as all things, is expelled, delivered to the rest of the world, fading from our lungs and leaving us. Breathless, we yearn for more, to return to us that which we exhaled in lapsed moments. Loss is wrung from clenched fists, wound around fingers like hangman ropes that closed around throats, fists that constricted around hearts; they squeezed and held on until bridges might bend, and hearts, at last, burst. Little bleeding bits, fragile pins, clasped in hands now spread across white wrists, dripping and lapping onto the ground.

We are porcelain in these subtle ways, those delicate dips and swerves of skin and tendon and bone. Youth bares a bludgeoned tenderness and inevitably, we are worn, marred with age. Hoarse from words that were swept under sheets in winter months, muffled in the presence of mourning. Life is learning to succumb, to retract and introvert. We tie our limbs to our sides to remain postured and austere. To be frail is to be human. Palms are pressed, stretched to caress the harshness of the external world. Digital is an identity, a defense for wounded souls, composed of interrelated wires, connected, rejected and disconnected, divided. Flesh intertwined and combined with machinery, extensions of technology colliding with that vulnerable humanity. Picked and split from intent and built to be deliberate.

Crypts are burrowed behind ribcages; the end is within the heart. Affection is felt not with fingertips or lips, but rather the reverberating sounds through which we nuzzle gentle motions and meanings in translation. A shift, swift, plummeting in the core, always wanting more. It’s never enough. His heart, held within two palms, displayed as though on a platter for the world to view, settled against her skin. Quaking, shivering and bare, it stared at her. With him, she rested her heart, positioned it inside his fists. Closed. He watched as the blood bag hardened against his grip. Her heart struggled, stuck under the weight of expectation, of consummation. Froze. Layered with that apprehension, that fizzing, hissing uncertainty laced in temptation. Whispered, more.