Doll is More than a Name—
stiff, silent, still, dull eyes like raw onyx in need
of polish. Though stone is more prized the less
hollow it holds. Unlike a womb, a puppet, a doll
whose inside means vessel. Blessed are those
who plant trees beneath whose shade they will
never sit—I once believed this, but my children
are not seeds sewn in the deep soil of the pitch
pine, or grown as free as a red oak’s thousand
blooms. I am no planter, but a mother, someone
who knows how to grow life from the emptiness
within. I am a woman become the Doll of a man
called Captain—he was first and always will be
Shoe: made to move, to shield his most tender
flesh, to keep treading that promise of a shade
not his own