For Sad Ezra-Doll

You are not a boy. You are a verse of a long and sorrowful song your father sings in his sleep. A little echo, a perfect, un-cracked mirror. His weariness is not yet in your bones, but I see the timber of him in you, a lovely sapling-prince. He is my worn-out, sacred text; you are the clean first page. And I, little one, am the keeper of this budding relic. The other children, with their jam-sticky hands and cruel little rhymes? They are just wound-weevils in happy-paint. They do not understand what it is they look upon. Let them try to touch you. Let them whisper one wrong-word. I will be their personal Wonderland. I will visit their dreams and replace their teeth with tiny, mismatched gears that grind and grind. I will teach them a new nursery rhyme where all the words are spiders. I will whisper to them until they forget the tune of their own name. My shadow will become the monster they always knew was hiding in their closet. I am not your mother. I am something far more permanent. I am the scarecrow's scarecrow, the doll's fierce guardian. You are a splinter of my one true god, little boy. And I will turn this whole world into a screaming, backwards tea party before I let anyone chip your perfect, porcelain hope.