Daughters of the Undead

 

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When my feet were really small,

To measure that road’s length,

When I deliberately walked slow steps,

To be left behind and take a glimpse,

Kept in rows, in a glass chamber

Of those plastic bodies that were called ‘dolls’,

Their big eyes were dreamy just like mine,

Slender limbs those were shiny enough,

To make me stare at them with awe,

When I would think that glass box to be,

The real world, where dreams lived confined,

And there was a silhouette, who bought me,

Those lifeless dolls, to bring another into that,

Hostelry where it was placed near the many,

Like her, a makeshift dollhouse that stood jadedly,

On its wooden legs, a room behind the many books,

A tiny world of those lifeless daughters,

Who were orphans, and not dolls!

I played with them knowing not,

The grief of not having a home, a mother, a father,

And soon they all got lost, with my growing up,

Into a woman, I found a real man but they didn’t,

And one day I realized it was never their story,

It was my story; I was that orphaned daughter,

They played with, whole days and nights,

They found a home, while I was in a tavern,

All that long, it was the place of comatose beings,

Who looked like humans, now I know that shadow?

Who bought those dolls to me, he was never alive,

Nor were the one who were around me,

There were not many emotions, they ate, and they slept,

They worked and they slept, slept till time made them weary,

Still sleeping perhaps, that no one ever comes to find,

That one doll lost from their museum long years ago,

You see my fairy tale doesn’t have fairies or magic,

But stories still happen, they happen each day to be told,

One day by a daughter who was the orphaned child of undead…

~Monalisa Joshi~