sand

did i leave them or did they
leave me; i don’t remember
any farewells, i didn’t ask about
their futures or dream we were
re-united; i can still glimpse
joan, i dropped her on the dirt
at the bottom of the toddlers’
slippery dip as i ran off to climb
the high ladder of the bigger dip,
the silver coated letters of its rungs
calling up up higher higher, for that
thrill of whooshing down, airborn
- i didn’t need a doll’s hand then,
joan the felt doll, did she feel
anything – her mouth smitten with
dark sand as i flew down, my mouth
wide open to adventure’s wind
 
margaret and sharon
stuffed together in their blue
white pram for a day at the beach
in the big front garden, swimming
lessons through the bindi-eyed
tormented grass they didn’t
understand you had to kick your
legs, they stared at you in doll
solemnity their thick eyelashes
didn’t seem to care as they filled
up with ants –
 
dinah my china doll
was the one who seemed
alive, or was it more my
guilt that thrived, at not
being able to restore her
black forehead’s lacquered
gloss, chipped when she and
i fell down the back porch
steps the scribbled greyblack
pencil marks across the gap
where black paint had chipped
to pink – an early moment of
a buried sense of failure to get
things exactly right
 
like a large almond
the miniature box of worry
dolls, each smaller than a
match, sits there on a bookshelf
fading in the sunlight like all my
good intentions down the multiplying
years; these dolls stay pristine, bright
inside like cocktail onions – i do all
the worrying, bleached of any colour,
while individually unnamed they bide
their time -