Puddles

By Skylar Nipper

Somewhere inside a small, cold, stone-built cave,

There is a doll made up of twigs and tape and all the bad things.

It is rotting from wet walls and suffocating from thin air,

Though it has no lungs.

The doll washes itself in the puddles on the ground, sometimes,

But once the mold and soil wipe off into the water,

The doll is no longer itself. 

The reflection in the water shows an

Unpolluted, unstained, untarnished thing—a thing that has become

Undone, unfinished, unfastened to what it is: a doll. 

Twigs and tape and all the bad things.

It is rotting from the wet walls and suffocating in unreal lungs,

And these rotting twigs and fraying tape and shrinking unreal lungs

Are all of it. If it were to be

Unzipped, unglued from all the bad things, 

What would be left? 

The unpolluted, unstained, untarnished thing in the puddle?

The doll—if by some miracle—were unsoiled, 

It would have no reflection in the water that was not

Unnerved, unbalanced, unperformed. 

It would have no hair, no hobby, no home. 

Would it still be here? 

Would it still be a doll, still be something with a reflection,

Still be something that bothers to look inside a puddle? 

Would it still be?

By Skylar Nipper