Your Doll

Daniel Key

All that’s left is your doll. The one I knitted in your image. It has your hair, your skin, your ability to somehow always be warm. I was always the cold one. 

There are times when I put your doll next to some weapon, some article of destruction that could end its life. I hold a knife across its throat, I dangle a hammer over its head. I run scissors across its pretty face. 

But I never go through with it. I never have the strength. Once I nicked its cheek and the yarn unravelled and I worried for weeks I’d scarred your real face. I saw you in my dreams with your new ruined expression, your wound looking at me as if it were another eye.

Christina told me that she saw you. You were sitting in McDonald’s with your friends. She brought you up whenever she could, even though I told her I didn’t want to hear your name again. She’s always been like that. 

She told me you looked sad, but she quickly said that maybe she just thought that, with her insider knowledge. Reminding me in her sly way that she knew you before me, that we only ever had what we had because she introduced us at the party. 

She said you looked sad and I asked her if anything was wrong with your face. She gave me a puzzled look. 

Nothing more wrong than usual, she said, grinning. 

When me and you first got together she asked me all sorts of questions and I tried to avoid them but she said real friends tell each other everything.  

You don’t want to hear that. That’s just being mean. I’ve learned anger is healthy if you express it without malice. I can say the words ‘I don’t like that you’ve run away from me.’ But I shouldn’t say ‘you were always a coward, I should’ve known what you would do.’ 

The first is true. The second is not. But the second would hurt. That is why it should remain unsaid. I never told her about the doll, though. I kept that all to myself. 

Some nights I sleep with it. I stroke its hair and I kiss its lipless face, and sometimes I even caress it in between its knitted legs where nothing exists, hoping you might still feel my touch. 

 Other nights I leave it in the bedside drawer, the one I keep empty. There’s nothing in there you can use as a pillow, as a blanket. There’s nothing to hold on to. I hope that the darkness makes you feel alone. 

I could have made one of myself to give to you like you asked, before everything was over. You loved the dog I gave you, and the sea serpent, but you always wanted one of me. I tried to make them. Three separate times I started. But, every time, I got to a point where they began to look at me strange. They looked at me like they were monsters who could still be saved, who could still be stopped from coming to life. So I threw them away half-finished before they could breathe. There was also that part of me that said you were just being nice. That you didn’t really want one. That you just thought it would be polite of you to ask. You know, to feign some sort of love. Maybe it was silly, or maybe I was right. I don’t know what you would have done with it though. You probably would have thrown it away. You wouldn’t have done what I’ve been doing with yours. 

Besides, you never need me to knit you one. Your doll lives right here. Come collect me whenever you want.

Daniel Key is from London, England. He has a MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck College. His work has appeared in the Meniscus Literary Journal, Quibble Lit and Free Flash Fiction. He has won the Cygnature Story Prize. He writes a poem every day, even if it’s a bad one.

Art: Margo Hoover is an artist and teacher based in Oakland. She paints with bright colors that combine personal symbolism with religious and mystic iconography. You can learn more about her work at margoisbusy.art