Dollhouse

You are a book

hinged at the middle and laid open

so I can reach my hands into your rooms,

grabbing hold of each character,

moving pieces to make it easier

for me to grasp.

I can see through

the windows to the other side,

each curtain glued open

to reveal what waits within.

Your miniature playhouse,

tiny painted faces meant to mask

myriad stories and truths,

all play things in my hands.

Your lofty ideas

and protective constructs

are pulled back like the curtains,

a facade too easily ignored

to be of consequence.

The lace you use to

camouflage imperfections,

only doilies to cover over potholes.

I sit astride these gaping holes

and stroke your tender fussing id

never uttering aloud anything

but compliments and half truths.

No one need ever be exposed

to the harsh glare of reality.

I see myself too clearly to trust

fumbling amateurs to subtlety.

They know not how to buffer truth

with the right amount of lies.

I play these games, manipulating characters

placing them in different light depending

on the time of day or the color of my fancy.

I reach inside your dollhouse.

I am the wall that keeps your secrets.

You know that I would never tell a soul

because the dollhouse is a mirror

and the voices are all mine.

Reviews

[Creepy Swine Guy]

This was an intriguing write. At first I got sidetracked trying to connect the first two lines to the rest of the poem, but eventually decided that the narrator was imply telling someone, "You are an open book." The real metaphor, it seemed to me was to a person's being and a dollhouse (thus the title).

Once I accepted the first two lines for what I suspect that they are, the next thing that struck me was that your poem and it's house/being metaphor brought to mind something that I read in Hannibal, by Thomas Harris ...

"Hannibal went to the center of his own mind and into the foyer of his memory palace. He elected for music in the corridors, a Bach string quartet, and passed quickly through the Hall of Mathematics, through Chemistry, to the room he’d adopted recently from the Carnavalet Museum and renamed the Hall of the Cranium. It took only a few minutes to store everything, associating anatomical details with the set arrangements of displays in the Carnavalet, being careful not to put the venous blues of the face against blues in the tapestries.

When he had finished in the Hall of the Cranium, he paused for a moment in the Hall of Mathematics, near the entrance. It was one of the oldest parts of the palace in his mind. He wanted to treat himself to the feeling he got at the age of seven when he understood the proof Mr. Jakov showed him. All of Mr. Jakov’s tutorial sessions at the castle were stored there, but none of their talks from the hunting lodge."

Yours intrigued me a stitch more that Harris's from the standpoint that Harris has Lecter perusing the 'Palace' of his own memory, while you have the narrator in the 'Palace' of someone else's being. As an introvert, that thought made my skin crawl. Your narrator saw beneath my camouflaging lace and learned all of my secrets (they THINK) ... but they were delicate with them, not only keeping them for me but being ... "the wall that keeps your secrets."

You know .. the more I see this ... the more I go back over it ... it could also be a metaphor for the Writer's Cafe, with the end of it's second stanza ...

"No one need ever be exposed
to the harsh glare of reality.
I see myself too clearly to trust
fumbling amateurs to subtlety.
That know not how to buffer truth
with the right amount of lies."

This was not easy to parse, but we mustn't run from that which is challenging or surly we will miss some gems.

[Kristina Moulaison]

Your review was fascinating. I had forgotten writing this. I was just talking to my son, who has a very high social IQ, about the silent contract we all sign to not reveal too much of what we think we know about a person; about not making assumptions. We are simple and complex. I have sometimes wondered if it is the quiet ones, the introverts who see too much and because of that, guard themselves too closely. But then we're not that simple either. This sounds to me like a person playing with people, playing with words. I don't really remember what I was thinking. Have you seen the new TV series, Hannibal? It's good, if you're into that. I really like the part you quoted up there. It's how I feel about life, speaking of the social contract. I don't trust people to know how to do it. It's also what I love about you. You are kind in a way that is not self serving, you understand how hard it is to have someone hold a mirror up to you. It's why I don't trust myself to speak, why I regret my words, in case in all my understanding I have said too much. At the same time I want so badly to crawl inside people's heads, obviously. It's a love/hate relationship I am describing with my own intentions, with the need to see inside people and not see or be seen at all, I think.

[Kristina Moulaison]

The important part of this poem for me is the end. The realization for the one who tries to understand others that we can only see as far as ourselves. Our understanding is all tainted by our own bias of experience. It colors everything we see until we can only describe our own reflection over and over in different lights. Like Don Miguel Ruiz says, we are the main character in our own drama. Everyone else is just a secondary character. They act from their own place of experience and so we cannot take what they do or say personally. I believe this to a fault I think.

[quinfinn]

seems we all have those well secluded pitfalls in our domains. never have i seen it put quite so cryptically and eloquently in verse. this is a masterpiece of family closets and their proverbial skeletons. very cleverly written.

[Kristina Moulaison]

Thank you! I appreciate it. :)

[quinfinn]

de nada

[Kristina Moulaison]

:)